Web 2.0 for Grids and e-Science

Abstract

Web 2.0-style services and capabilities collectively define a comprehensive distributed computing environment that may be considered an alternative or supplement to existing Grid computing approaches for e-Science. Web 2.0 is briefly summarized as building upon network-enabled, stateless services with simple message formats and message exchange patterns to build rich client interfaces, mash-ups (custom, composite, Web applications), and online communities. In this article, we review several of our activities in these areas: service architectures for Chemical Informatics; Web 2.0 approaches for managing real-time data from online experiments; management and federation of digital entities and their metadata obtained from multiple services; and the use of tagging and social bookmarking to foster scientific networking at minority serving institutions. We conclude with a discussion of further research opportunities in the application of Web 2.0 to e-Science.