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News and Events

This page lists current news and details of forthcoming events. For old news and past events, visit the News and Events Archive.

OGSA-DAI workshop at OGF21

This workshop will take place at OGF21 in the Leonesa-1 room on Tuesday from 3-4.30pm.

The basic idea for this workshop is to consider the complete spectrum of data work across OGF, from the higher level vision being defined by the OGSA data architecture group; the data standards being produced such as DAIS and ByteIO; the technologies realising these standards such as OGSA-DAIv3 and then to the end user developers trying to building applications with these technologies. Think of it as microcosm of OGF as a whole.

The agenda for the workshop is:

3pm INTRODUCTION Richard Sinnott (NeSC Glasgow)
3.05pm The BIG PICTURE::OGSA Data architecture in a nutshell Allen Luniewski (IBM)
3.25pm THE STANDARDS::OGSA Data standards (DAIS/ByteIO) Ally Hume (EPCC)
3.45pm THE DEVELOPERS::Applying OGSA-DAIv3 in the Clinical Domain A.Stell (NeSC Glasgow)
4.0pm WRAP UP/DISCUSSION
4.30pm CLOSE

The idea behind this workshop is to provide a snapshot of what is going on and a reality check of the work in the data area. 10th October 2007

OGSA-DAI is one to watch

OGSA-DAI has been named by IBM's Developer Works as one of a set of production projects and organizations "that are shaping the future of grid computing". 24th September 2007

How OGSA-DAI can be used in DEISA

At the DEISA Training Session on 29-31 October in Bologna, the Accessing External Data Resources from DEISA Grid session will describe how OGSA-DAI can be used to access data from a remote relational or XML database for a DEISA job. 12th September 2007

OGSA-DAI at OGF21

There will be an OGSA-DAI workshop entitled Data Integration Solutions with OGSA-DAI at OGF21. In addition there will be some OGSA-DAI content in the Globus and Community for OGF session. 11th September 2007

OGSA-DAI 3.0 Released!

The OGSA-DAI project, a partner in OMII-UK, have released version 3.0 of their database access and integration software.

OGSA-DAI provides an extensible framework designed for the exposure of structured data resources - whether these be databases, files or other types of data - onto a Grid. It allows these to be accessed via Web services. Most importantly, it provides a workflow engine for the execution of data-centric workflows involving data access, update, transformation and delivery operations.

Driven by requirements from users the OGSA-DAI team have produced OGSA-DAI 3.0. This is a complete redesign and rewrite of the OGSA-DAI software and includes a number of major changes implemented in response to requirements from existing users:

  • OGSA-DAI's workflow units have been simplified and unified to be both more extensible and standardised, and to allow workflows to be composed more easily.
  • Multiple databases can be utilised within the scope of a single workflow.
  • Different parts of a workflow can operate upon different parts of a data stream concurrently.
  • Resources and services have been refactored to improve modularity and reduce functional overloading.
  • APIs have been completely refactored to allow developers to utilise application-specific functionality and databases within OGSA-DAI more easily.

Versions of this release compliant with Axis 1.4, Axis 1.2.1 and Globus Toolkit 4.0.5 are available.

This release provides a powerful product for both data integrators and developers of data applications to build upon and which the OGSA-DAI team hopes will benefit the e-Science community.

For further information please see the downloads page.

7th September 2007

Neil Chue Hong is appointed as the new Director of OMII-UK

Neil Chue Hong, the OGSA-DAI project leader and development leader for the past 5 years, has been appointed as the new Director of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute UK, the collaborative e-Science project between the University of Southampton, the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh, of which OGSA-DAI is a part.

In turn, Mario Antonioletti of EPCC, who has been integral to OGSA-DAI since 2002, will step into Neil's role as project leader responsible for liasing with the e-Science and Grid communities and taking over from Neil as the OMII-UK Operations Manager at Edinburgh. Mike Jackson of EPCC, who has worked on OGSA-DAI since 2002, will take over responsibility for technical leadership and internal project management.

The OGSA-DAI team wishes Neil all the best and look forward to continuing to work with him in his new role.

OGSA-DAI Training at NeSC

OGSA-DAI training courses will be provided at the UK National e-Science Centre (NeSC) on:

  • 11-12 October, Introduction to OGSA-DAI.
  • 1-2 November, Deploying Grid Data Services using OGSA-DAI.

28th August 2007

OGSA-DAI 3.0 Training at the UK AHM

There will be an OGSA-DAI 3.0 session at the UK AHM 2007, Thursday 13 September, 9-10:40 am. 16th August 2007

OGSA-WebDB 2.1 Released

OGSA-WebDB 2.1 has been released. This release is compatible with OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.2 and GT 4.0.

OGSA-WebDB extends the OGSA-DAI architecture to help make existing web database (WebDB) resources grid-enabled. Web databases are databases that are usually accessed via HTTP requests and queried using keywords/Boolean conditions. Examples include Pubmed, OMIM, and KEGG. With OGSA-WebDB you can access and integrate the data of the web databases using SQL (join) queries.

Improvements over version 2.1 include extending OGSA-DAI's base exception classes and propagating error messages from wrappers to clients. Some important bugs have been fixed.

More information about the software and download can be found at: http://dbgrid.org/index.php?OGSA-WebDB.

25th June 2007

OGSA-DAI 3.0 Release Update

An update about the OGSA-DAI 3.0 release status is available here. 19th June 2007

UK AHM 2007 Registration Now Open

Registrations for the UK All Hands Meeting 10-13 September are now open. More info from here. 15th May 2007

OMII-UK 3.4.0 Released

The OMII-UK 3.4.0 release is now out. More details from here. 8th May 2007

OMII-UK Newsletter May 2007

The May issue of the OMII-UK newsletter is now available. More information and the actual newsletter is available from here. 8th May 2007

OGSA-DAI-RDF V1.0 Available

OGSA-DAI-RDF V1.0 has been released. This software is released as an alpha version. OGSA-DAI-RDF adds a new resource type "RDF" to the exisiting "XML" and "relational" resource types. The software provides a set of RDF processing OGSA-DAI activities which support several RDF repositories like Jena. By using OGSA-DAI-RDF, you can combine your OGSA-DAI activities with our RDF processing activities with the SPARQL query processing and the reasoning functions of Jena.

The improvements of this software include,

  • Re-designed activity interface.
  • New GUI including activity workflow editor.
  • Introductions of product-independent RDF driver layer and drivers.

If you interested in this software, please go to http://www.dbgrid.org and download the package by following the 'Download' link.

One feature of this software is that this R&D is synchronized with OGF DAIS activity for the emerging RDF(S) specification. 8th May 2007

OGSA-DAI Users' Group Meeting at OGF20

We are planning to have a Users Group meeting at OGF20 that will present what some projects are currently doing with OGSA-DAI, will give you an opportunity to find out what's happening with OGSA-DAI and give you a chance to feed-back. More details here. 4th May 2007

Applications for the ISSGC has been Exteneded

The application deadline to attend the International Summer School on Grid Computing has been extended to the 15th of May. 3rd May 2007

OGSA-DQP 3.2 Technical Preview is Now Out

The OGSA-DQP 3.2 Tech Preview release is now available from the OGSA-DAI download pages. This release of the DQP software is intended to provide users with a preview of the functionality provided by the new OGSA-DQP query compiler/optimiser. This version is compatible with OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.2 and OGSA-DAI WSI 2.2 -- a full release, compatible with OGSA-DAI 3.0, is scheduled for Autumn 2007. 26th April 2007

OMII-UK AHM 2007 Mini-Workshop

Call For Papers & Participation for the OMII-UK AHM 2007 Mini-Workshop to be held at the Sixth UK e-Science All Hands Meeting (AHM 2007) on 10th-13th September 2007 at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham.

OMII-UK was formed in January 2006 as a partnership between the existing OMII activity at the University of Southampton, and software activities at the University of Manchester within the myGrid project and the OGSA-DAI project at the National e Science Centre and EPCC. OMII-UK aims to provide software and support to enable a sustained future for the UK e-Science community and its international collaborators www.omii.ac.uk.

Papers and presentations are sought relating to:

  • the use of OMII-UK software to support applied science communities
  • the development of software to support end-user communities using OMII-UK software as a base
  • the end-user functionality being developed within the OMII-UK commissioned software programme

To submit abstracts to this mini-workshop please go to the submissions page at the AHM website ( http://www.allhands.org.uk/news/paper_submissions.cfm), which includes details of how to format your submission. Deadline for submission is 16th April 2007.

19th March 2007

Fifth International Grid Summer School

The fifth in the highly successful series of International Summer Schools in Grid Computing will be held at Gripsholmsviken Hotell & Konferens of Mariefred, Sweden, near Stockholm, from 8th to 20th July 2007 ( http://www.redcross.se/gripsholm and ). To find further details and to register for the school visit the web site at: http://www.iceage-eu.org/issgc07/index.cfm. 15th March 2007

Abstract and Slides from the Third DIALOGUE Workshop

Abstracts and Slides from the Third DIALOGUE Workshop Towards the Next Generation of Data Grid Software are available here. 7th March 2007

Registration for OGF20 and the 2nd EGEE User Forum

Registration is now open for OGF20 and the 2nd EGEE User Forum to be held on May 7-11 in Manchester, UK. Register on-line. OMII-UK will have a stand and you will find OGSA-DAI staff present at various other stands and technical sessions too. 21st February 2007

Call For Papers: Sixth UK e-Science All Hands Meeting

The Sixth UK e-Science All Hands Meeting (AHM 2007) will be held from 10-13th September 2007 at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. The submission deadline is the 16th April 2007. More details can be found at www.allhands.org.uk. 20th February 2007

Register for the 3rd DIALOGUE Workshop

The Third DIALOGUE Workshop (Data Integration Applications: Linking Organizations to Gain Understanding and Experience) will be taking place on the 26th and 27th of February 2007 hosted by the Vienna University of Technology. For more details and workshop registration, please visit the workshop website: http://www.gridminer.org/dialogue/workshop.html. 7th February 2007

WEEP accepted as a new Globus Incubator project

The WEEP (Workflow Enactment Engine Project, previously known as Auriga) from the Gridminer team has been accepted as one of a new batch of Globus Incubator projects after support from the OGSA-DAI team last year to bring together the WEEP team with new partners from OSU and ANL. This has been possible through collaboration funded by the DIALOGUE project. See http://weep.gridminer.org/ for more details. 7th February 2007

OGSA-DAI WSI 2.2 Taverna 1.4 Proof-of-concept Released

A proof-of-concept bundle which demonstrates the use of OGSA-DAI WSI 2.2 from within a Taverna 1.4 workflow has been released. This code was written by the Taverna team of the University of Manchester in association with the OGSA-DAI team.

Download OGSA-DAI WSI 2.2 and Taverna 1.4 Proof-of-concept.

OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.2 JDBC Data Source Released

A proof-of-concept patch for OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.2 which demonstrates the use of JDBC DataSources within OGSA-DAI has been released. The code was graciously contributed to the OGSA-DAI project by J?rgen Seib (Deutscher Wetterdienst - DWD). This is the first release of a contribution made under OGSA-DAI's contributions process (https://ogsadai.org.uk/contribs).

Download OGSA-DAI WSRF 2.2 Data Source Proof-of-concept Patch.