As network performance has outpaced computational power and storage capacity, a new paradigm has evolved to enable the sharing and coordinated use of geographically distributed resources. This paradigm is popularly known as Grid computing and aims to couple distributed resources offering consistent and inexpensive access irrespective of physical location. Grid computing provides scalable and secure remote access to computing, data and other resources throughout the Internet. These new technologies enable the clustering of a wide variety of geographically distributed resources, such as supercomputers, storage systems, data sources, and special devices and services, that can then be used as a unified resource.
Much of the focus of the Grid to date has been within research organizations. As the power of Grid technologies becomes apparent, however, commercial parties are also increasing their level of participation. That leads to a greater focus on integration with commercial computing models and more work on the security and resource management models required for automated and secure access negotiation for remote resources. In order to control such a broad base of resources, Grid computing has a middleware layer which controls the distributed execution of applications.
This special issue brings together invited papers presented during the International Workshop on Middleware for Grid Computing (http://virtual.lncc.br/mgc2003) held in conjunction with ACM/IFIP/USINIX International Middleware Conference 2003. Authors have been invited to submit extended versions of their original papers including comments and suggestions, which were raised during the workshop. The papers in this issue are alphabetically ordered by their first author's name.
The workshop focused on topics including: classic grid middleware; object-oriented and component middleware; open Grid services architecture (OGSA) and Web services middleware; architectures and fabrics; information services; object metadata and schemas; resource management and scheduling; programming models, tools, and environments; performance evaluation and modeling; evolution of and experiences with Grid systems; Grid economy; (mobile) agents in Grids; and wireless technologies in Grids.