Constructing Grid Applications Using Standard Grid Middleware

The effectiveness of standard Grid middleware has been evaluated through the work of gridifying a legacy program. As a case study, we have gridified a typical parameter survey program called barotropic S-model which aims to predict short- to middle-term weather change accurately. Ninf-G was used to gridify the system. It was found that the program could be easily gridified using Ninf-G without worrying about the complicated structure of the Grid itself. Performance was measured on the ApGrid Testbed which spreads over Pan-Pacific countries. Although large costs of initialization and termination hinder the application from attaining good performance, these costs can be reduced by optimizing the middleware as well as the application itself. Using over 100 processors, we succeeded in giving a demonstration of a weather prediction simulation at the CCGrid conference, PRAGMA workshop, and SC2003 conference. Lessons learned from the construction of the demonstration system are presented.