In the whitepaper titled Modeling Stateful Resources with Web Services by Ian Foster et. al. the latest developments with respect the modeling of state with web services are very clearly introduced and discussed. Together with Karl Kesselman, Ian Foster is considered to be one of the founding fathers of Grid computing.
Since I have been actively involved in Grid computing, I witnessed the emergence of the WS-Resource Framework (WSRF) as a kind of spin-off from the research of the Global Grid Forum’s Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) Working Group. Although my current activities don’t involve these latest developements, I’m trying to keep myself somewhat up-to-date. These kind of papers are exactly serving this purpose.
It does not only address the latest developments, but also presents a clear description/explanation (+ taxonomy) of the way in which state and WSs are related, hence a recommendation for those who are interested to be informed on the latest developments in “web service land” and want to learn about how the world of Web Services meets the Grid.
