Towards a universal client for grid monitoring systems: Design and implementation of the ovid browser

Abstract

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. © 2006 IEEE.