The Grid is receiving much attention recently within and outside the computing profession. To many, it is the next revolution in computing. For others, it is the next hype, a bubble bound to burst soon. It is however universally agreed that the grid community have to produce a real, working Grid very soon if it wanted to maintain public interest and funding. In my talk I will give a short overview of how the concept of the Grid have moved/evolved from resource sharing to a service-oriented one and point out some of the key technical problems. I will also give my personal view on what a future grid should look like, and in relation to this briefly describe the JGrid project I lead that uses Jini Technology to create a next-generation grid infrastucture. In the process of generalising our Jini metacomputing environment we have realised that a universal service grid is a potentially better model for the Grid than current systems and the Java/Jini platform can provide seamless Grid service accessibility to a much wider user base. To illustrate this we are developing a PDA-based service access user interface for blind people that provides them with Braille input, speech output and effective navigation capabilities. The device will be able to discover any service in the network and transfer information in audio form to users. This mechanism would enable blind people (who normally find themselves cut off from the information society) to access information with ease, and potentially could create a million-strong grid user base. In the second half of my talk I will discuss the technical issues related to this project such as the delivery of adaptive user interfaces, the possibilitites for adaptive multimedia handling and transfer, as well as the use of multimedia databases. The talk will finish open-ended, hopefully, provoking an interesting discussion.
Zoltan Juhasz is a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Veszprem, Hungary. He graduated from the Technical University of Budapest in 1989 (PhD, 1997) and started his carreer at The Queen's University of Belfast in the Dept. of Computer Science. He is in Veszprem since 1992, where he teaches Parallel Programming and Internet Application Development. His research interests have evolved with time, from parallel image processing and performance prediction through parallel discrete-event simulation to metacomputing systems. He became intersted in grid systems around 1998. This interest became dominant with the release of Jini Technology in 1999, and since then he focuses on the use of Jini in the Grid. He leads the Parallel and Distributed Group in Veszprem that conducts research in grid and service-oriented architectures, as well as in the innovative use of Java and Jini Technologies. Since 1997 he regularly teaches in the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Exeter where he is an Honorary University Fellow. He has published his results in various international conferences and journals and gave tutorials on the use of Jini in the Grid.
Sprecher: Dr. Zoltan Juhasz Wann: Freitag, 24. Oktober 2003, 14:00 Uhr (s.t.) Wo: HS 1, Universität Klagenfurt