Not too long ago, I raised concerns about the real value of the Open Grid Forum (OGF). In part, I stated that “… Web Services continues to significantly eclipse Grid Computing.” To justify this statement, I provided a few examples. Now, consider the following extract from a recent announcement:

Boston, MA, USA; 7 September 2006 — OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSDM continues to enable management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers through a single interface. WSDM 1.1 integrates the standard versions of its dependent specifications: W3C’s WS-Addressing and OASIS’ WS-Resource Framework and WS-Notification.

Unfortunately for the Grid community, this recent progress with WSDM amplifies my original statement.

How?

Fundamentally WSDM is another demonstration of Grid Computing being eclipsed, make that subsumed (!), by Web Services. Although Grid Computing continues to serve well as a fertile context for the initial development of requirements, use cases, etc., migration into the Web Services arena follows with maturation. Of course, this migration isn’t all bad. In fact, in cases such as the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) being refactored into Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF), it’s a demonstration of the Grid Community doing the right thing. However, if Grid Computing’s role is to continue to serve in this facilitative fashion for Web Services, it needs to be acknowledged and adjusted to.

WSDM depends on, i.e., it directly leverages, WS-RF. Even though WS-RF is a refactored instantiation of the Global Grid Forum’s OGSI, with a few notable exceptions, the Grid community has been slow to leverage WS-RF. Somewhat ironically, WSDM does just that.

With the clout of a Web Services backing, WSDM has the potential for mass-market adoption.

In being a contraction of “wisdom”, WSDM is well named 🙂

With GridWorld already underway this week in Washington, DC, I sincerely hope that topics like this receive attention.