How does it work?

The GridSAM server runs within a standard Java servlet container, such as that provided with the OMII-UK Development Kit. It presents, using Web Services, both a "native" GridSAM submission interface and an OGSA-BES interface. Each GridSAM server can be configured to submit jobs to a given distributed resource manager (DRM) environment. A job-submission document is submitted to the server and used by it to arrange the staging-in of files for each job, the execution of that job on suitable resources via the DRM, and the staging-out of the final data. While the job is running, the GridSAM interface can be used to inspect the current status of the running job, e.g. to see if the job has completed. GridSAM can monitor the status of many concurrently running jobs on the back-end DRM.

Job-submission documents (written in JSDL) can be sent to the GridSAM service through either of the two web interfaces, or through a simple set of command-line-interface tools. In each case, the main component of the job submission is the JSDL document describing the data staging and job parameters.

For advanced developers producing their own systems, the GridSAM core can be removed from its Web Services container, and embedded directly into other products to act as an API, providing a common interface to the supported DRMs and to provide completely asynchronous job-monitoring functions.