Towards a universal client for grid monitoring systems: design and implementation of the Ovid browser

• Published in: Proceedings 20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium p. 8 pp.
• Main Authors: Dikaiakos, M.D., Artemiou, A., Tsouloupas, G.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2006
• Subjects: Algorithm design and analysis; Context modeling; Data visualization; Displays; Embedded software; Information retrieval; Monitoring; Navigation; Software algorithms; Software design
• ISBN: 1424400546; 9781424400546
• ISSN: 1530-2075
• DOI: 10.1109/IPDPS.2006.1639494

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of Ovid, a browser for grid-related information. The key goal of Ovid is to support the seamless navigation of users in the grid information space. Key aspects of Ovid are: (i) a set of navigational primitives, which are designed to cope with problems such as network disorientation and information overloading; (ii) a small set of Ovid views, which present the end-user with high-level, visual abstractions of grid information; these abstractions correspond to simple models that capture essential aspects of a grid infrastructure; (iii) support for embedding and implementing hyperlinks that connect related entities represented within different information views; (iv) a plug-in mechanism, which enables the seamless integration with Ovid of third-party software that retrieves and displays data from various grid information sources; and (v) a modular software design, which allows the easy integration of different visualization algorithms that support the graphical representation of large amounts of grid-related information in the context of Ovid's views