[AG-TECH] AccessGrid 3: What information is available

[Barz Hsu]

Dear Steve,
 We are looking forward to hearing your alternatives to the current 
direction.
Could you talk little about it published?
 The reasons of lack of improvements on the core communication tools of the 
AG (vic and rat) 
may be due to their inflexible architecture.
We also think VIC & RAT should be replaced by one of 
new framework and new architecture to improve it's useability and 
extensibility.
 Before the day comes out, we would continue to make these tools (vic &rat) 
better.
BTW, we plan to release MPEG4/H.264-enable vic and 
software based acoustic echo cancellation-enable rat in the late June.
 Regards,
 Barz
 On 5/20/05, Steve Smith <ssmith at vislab.usyd.edu.au> wrote: 
> 
> > I'd like to remedy any lack of information that's out there, and you'll 
> see efforts in the
> > near term to do so. While we're in this intermediate state, let us know 
> of questions so 
> > we can address them.
> 
> Thanks Tom.
> 
> I have a couple of concerns with the current state of affairs. One is
> that the current AGTK is an implementation rather than a protocol; i.e.
> it relies on a particular version of globus and other packages, and it 
> is all but impossible to interoperate with it. I would like a simple
> method to integrate other app into an AG session without having to rely
> on massive third-party libraries.
> 
> Another is that the web-services/globus architecture is a poor match for 
> the semantics of how we use AG; conceptually the AG is
> connection-oriented, but globus/WS is oriented towards transient
> connections.
> 
> I think these two problems have forced to development of AG to focus on 
> the AGTK, which should really be the simplest component. This leads to
> the third problem, which is that the core communication tools of the AG
> (vic and rat) are being neglected, and need a major overhaul. A lot of 
> the complexity and poor usability of the AG comes from these tools and
> the necessity of the AGTK to work around their limitations (vic
> especially), There is some good work being done on vic replacement but
> the Markus' ANU team, but that only addresses part of the problem, and 
> may not suit all configurations. I've done some basic work on cleaning
> up the core and hope to be able to dedicate more time to it soon, and
> Douglas at UQ is doing some work, but we really need more people on it. 
> Unfortunately it's not a sexy job.
> 
> Anyway, I'm currently writing a paper for the APAC conference about some
> alternatives to the current direction. I believe you're heading over
> for that conference so it would be good to talk then. 
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve
> 
> 
>
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