Middleware has two important additions

Working with research communities to provide development and access management tools for Grid and other research environments, the eighth release of the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI-R8) helps to facilitate the complex resource management and security required in a shared cyber-infrastructure.

NMI-R8 marks two important "firsts" for the NMI programme: the addition and integration of Ninf-G, the first non-US developed component included in the GRIDS Center software suite; and GridShib, the first software enabling interoperability between the Globus Toolkit and Shibboleth federating software.

Ninf-G is a GridRPC reference implementation developed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan. "With the integration of Ninf-G into the GRIDS Center stack, we're learning about the practical issues of sharing and supporting software across borders and languages, and see this activity as an important pilot study," said Philip Papadopoulos, program director, Grid and Cluster Computing at San Diego Supercomputer Center.

GridShib enables interoperability between the Globus Toolkit and Shibboleth federating software. Researchers who are members of both brick-and-mortar institutions and Globus-enabled virtual organizations can use their local campus credentials to access their distributed Grid-based resources.

NMI-R8 comprises several updated tools, software packages, practice documents, and schema that support institutional and federated identity management environments. The stack is flexible because the components are bundled together as one easy-to-deploy package. Once installed, only the parts of interest need to be configured. NMI-R8 is available to the public for downloading under open-source licences at www.nsf-middleware.org.

Author:
Compiled by Hannelore Hämmerle and Nicole Crémel