Unicore6

Unicore6 is the next generation of the UNICORE technology based on the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and other specifications from standardisation bodies like GGF/OGF, W3C, OASIS and IETF. The integration and adoption of standards such as the Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF) is the
basis for interoperability with other Grid technologies.

Maintained By:
Forschungszentrum Jülich, ZAM
Version 6.0.1 is available from Sourceforge or from the project website.

License:
The UNICORE software and its extensions are available as Open Source under BSD license.

Release:
26 November 2007: Latest Version 6.0.1.
28 August 2007: Official Release.

Security:
Authentication and authorization are based on full X.509 certificates, SAML assertions and XACML 1.0 authorization policies; pluggable extensions for proxy certificates and virtual organization management are provided.

Data Management:
Data management functions like import, export, or transfer of files from one target system to another are supported.

User Integration:
The user access to the grid is done either via a graphical client, the GPE client, develped by Intel or via the UNICORE command line client UCC.

The GPE client provides the option to include so called GridBeans, that can be designed by the user for different applications. GridBeans consist of a GUI in which the user can select a job type, enter input data for his job, specify input files and define which output files he wants to retrieve.

The GPE client provides a GUI framework with an application, an expert and a portal client: The application client can be customized for specific applications; the expert client provides access to all grid services and includes the workflow editor for user defined BPEL workflows. The portal client can be integrated into JSR168-based Web Portal solutions.

GPE is interoperable with the Atomic services of Unicore6 and interfaces also to Globus Toolkit 4.

Both clients are availble for download on sourceforge .

Core Functionalities

Workflow: UNICORE6 provides a workflow functionality that enables workflows of varying complexity to run across multiple supercomputers and other grid resources.
Brokering: UNICORE6 uses live, dynamic information (where available) like system load, job turnaround times and other static information like installed applications or user rights. Brokering strategies are configurable (round robin, least turnaround time, ...)
Monitoring: UNICORE6 does not support monitoring yet. However the monitoring tool SIMON that was already used in UNICORE5 will become available soon.
Accounting: Possible using other tools.
Steering: Collobarative Visiualization and steering was done in a case study with the Visualization Interface Toolkit (VISIT) developed by Research Center Jülich (FzJ) and Intel´s GPE client.
Interactive access: Unicore6 has plugins for ssh.
Addressing (WS-Adressing compliant?) UNICORE 6 is based on existing WS standards.
Transactions: Not yet, but it is on the roadmap of the Unicore developers for future projects (for example: D-GRID II)
WS-RF compliant? Unicore6 was one of the first middleware fully compliant with WS-RF