Bringing AJAX to grid portals

Abstract

Grid portals provide researchers the power of Grid through Web browsers. Today these portals are mostly Java-based and therefore the Java Portlet Specification 1.0 (JSR 168) has been widely adopted. Acting as Web components, portlets wrap relatively independent individual functionalities like Grid proxy credential management and job submission. These components can then be aggregated for construction of portal pages. One of the key issues Grid portals are facing now is that they are not as attractive as desktop applications because they lack instant response and complex visual effects. To address this, we are going to investigate Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). AJAX is becoming increasingly popular in the Web development community, in particular, it is one of the key aspects of today's Web 2.0. In this paper, we will discuss how Grid portals can benefit from AJAX so that more end-users could be attracted.