Terminology

APST: AppLeS Parameter Sweep Template (APST)- automates the execution of parameter sweep applications.  Refer to APST tutorial for more information.

Certificate: Used for authentication and encryption purposes by grid enabled software.  Enables single sign-on capabilities across NPACI Grid resources.  Refer to Certificates for more information.

Condor-G: An enhanced version of Condor that builds on the strengths of the Globus Toolkit to provide a single access point for running and monitoring jobs on the NPACI Grid.  See Condor-G for more information.

Gatekeeper: A root-level process which handles all globus job requests at a remote site.  Refer to Globus Jobs in the tutorial more information.

GIIS: Grid Index Information Service- part of the monitoring and discovery services available to publish and access NPACI Grid system and application data.

Globus Jobmanager: A process started when a gatekeeper receives a job request at a remote site.  The NPACI Grid has both interactive (i.e. fork) and batch (i.e. PBS or loadleveler) jobmanagers available.  Refer to the Globus Jobs tutorial for more information.

Globus Toolkit: A basic set of software libraries and services providing support for for Grids and Grid applications.  The Toolkit includes software for security, information infrastructure, resource management, data management, communication, fault detection, and portability.  See www.globus.org for more information.

GridFTP: A high-performance, secure, reliable data transfer protocol optimized for high-bandwidth wide-area networks.  The GridFTP protocol is based on FTP, the highly-popular Internet file transfer protocol.  GridFTP provides the following protocol features.  See GridFTP.

GRAM: Globus Resource Allocation Manager - provides job submission capabilities on the NPACI Grid.  See http://www.globus.org/gram for more details.

Grid: An infrastructure that enables the integrated, collaborative use of high-end computers, networks, databases, and scientific instruments owned and managed by multiple organizations.  Grid applications often involve large amounts of data and/or computing and often require secure resource sharing across organizational boundaries, and are thus not easily handled by today’s Internet and Web infrastructures. 

GSI: Grid Security Infrastructure.  Component of the globus toolkit for authentication and encryption over an open network.  GSI provides single sign-on capabilities on NPACI Grid resources.  See http://www.globus.org/security/

NMI: NSF Middleware Initiative - All of the Grids Center Software Suite components of NMI Release 3.1 are included in the distribution.

NPACI Grid: A production class, heterogeneous national Grid consisting of interoperable software, scientific applications, and hardware resources located at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TAAC) in Austin, TX, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

NPACKage: A collection of 14 mature software components developed by partnership participants and national collaborators.  NPACKage is deployed across all major NPACI compute, data and networking resources to form a uniform software environment for the NPACI-Grid.  NPACKage builds on top of the common infrastructure supplied by the Grids Center Software Suite as part of the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI).

NWS: Network Weather Service- a distributed system that periodically monitors and dynamically forecasts the performance various network and computational resources can deliver over a given time interval.  See NWS.

Proxy: Certificates signed by the user, or by another proxy, that do not require a password to submit a job.  They are intended for short-term use, when the user is submitting many jobs and cannot be troubled to repeat a password for every job.  See Certificates for more information.