Speakers
Description
Impact
The impact of this workshop will be twofold. Firstly, this sets in train an activity that leads to the processes and practices that are necessary for future application development. Secondly, those present will leave with a greater understanding of current methodologies and constraints associated with the development of original software applications for research. A further goal of this workshop is to establish what role, if any, EGI should play in this process.
Description of the Work
The workshop will start with a very brief introduction on software application development in grid computing highlighting how funding responsibilities will be transferred to domain-specific research communities. There will then be three short presentations from a representative from the research community, an application developer and an NGI site manager. During the second half of the workshop the participants will be invited to contribute to discussion out of which we hope to come to a common understanding of the optimal approach for software application development in the future. In order to ensure that user communities get the software applications that they need, a set of guiding processes and practices will have to be identified. The key goal of this meeting is to achieve consensus on the scope on such practices and where responsibilities should lie.
Overview (For the conference guide)
The EGI ecosystem is built upon a complex construction of evolving software ranging from networking to middleware to user applications. As we move from the large project support model to smaller projects and then to domain-based support we need to re-evaluate the software development processes and their associated project management. The purpose of this workshop is to investigate how research teams commission original software applications: what approaches are taken, how long does it take, how do you explain what you need? Most importantly, how do you ensure that it does what you want it to do? The workshop is targeted at research teams and their leaders to explain what they need, together with application developers to explain what is possible and the NGIs to explain what is available.
Conclusions
As we move from the large project support model to smaller projects and then to domain-based support we need to re-evaluate the software development processes and their associated project management. In order to ensure that user communities get the software applications that they need, a set of guiding processes and practices will have to be identified. A further goal of this workshop is to establish what role, if any, EGI should play in this process.
