Distributed Accounting Working Group (DAWG)

Distributed Accounting ModelsResearch Group

Monday, 22 July 2002

Tuesday, 23 July 2002

Edinburgh, Scotland

Agenda – Session 1(Monday, July 22, 3-4:30pm, Harris 2)

• Overview– Chairs, structure– Papers– Current Initiatives

• Current & Best Practices• Usage Records• Economies of Exchange• Implementations

• Charter

Agenda – Session 2(Tuesday, July 23, 8:30-10am, Harris 2)

• Consensus on charter• Task list

– Current/Best practices– Usage Records– Account Allocation– Economies of Exchange– Related work in other RGs,WGs, and Areas– Anything else?

• Goal-setting: who, what, when for each task

Session 1

Overview – Chairs, Structure

• Grid Forum Steering Committee– Chair: Charlie Catlett

• Area– Architecture– Chair: Bill Johnston

• Research Group– Distributed Accounting Models– Chairs: Bill Thigpen, Tom Hacker

Overview: Papers

• Many are being worked on

• None have entered the GGF Document Approval process

1. Paper needs to meet GGF Document Format Standards

2. Paper needs to be approved by the Research Group

3. Paper needs to be submitted to GFSG representative for comments and acceptance

Overview: Current Initiatives

• Current & Best Practices– Status: Papers written but weak on data so they have not

been submitted for approval

• Usage Records– BOF @ GGF5 (under Scheduling Area)

• Economies of Exchange– BOF @ GGF5 (under Scheduling Area)

• OGSA Resource Usage Service WG @ BOF • Implementations

– Good base of work, some papers have been presented

Charter

• Charter was approved N years ago

• Is it accurate?

• What further action should be taken?

Charter: Statement of Purpose• Identify needed account and accounting

information• Determine the needed mechanisms to pass this

information• Work with agencies to ensure their needs are

addressed• Document this information to facilitate reference

implementations of these specifications• Provide a collaborative forum to facilitate joint

efforts between organizations

Charter: Description

• Develop a straw-man grid accounting architecture• Define other interactions with grid components

and existing systems, minimizing impact• Create a specification that could be used to build

and evaluate distributed accounting prototypes• Identify agency/university/corporate concerns that

must be addressed and recommend solutions– In particular, concerns include sharing resources in an

open grid environment and managing grid use of their resources

Charter: The Straw-man

A straw-man architecture or vision document is required in this area to provide an overall goal for the group. Unlike other groups in the GridForum, the DAWG does

not have sample implementations, but is essential to allow the grid to succeed.

Charter: Interactions

The definition of interactions with other groups and existing systems is critical to the success of this group. The focus of this group in the short-term should be to provide the other groups within the

forum the information they need, so the accounting questions do not hold them up. Additionally, it is

imperative that this group provides a clean and efficient interface to existing accounting systems,

minimizing impacts to these current systems.

Charter: Specifications

Specifications including schemas, protocols, and APIs need to be identified and developed.

Charter: Agency Issues

It is important that we keep in mind that the structure that we proposed must work in the “real world” The requirements of varying organizations are widely

distributed and at times in conflict with each other, so it is important that the specifications meet a wide base of needs and does not specify a way for internal accounting to be.

Session 2

Agenda – Session 2

• Consensus on charter• Task list

– Current/Best practices– Usage Records– Economies of Exchange– Related work in other RGs,WGs, and Areas– Anything else?

• Goal-setting: who, what, when for each task

Charter: Statement of Purpose

The Accounting Research Group is chartered to identify issues in grid accounting from multiple perspectives. The work done in this Research Group will serve as a starting

point from which specific Working Groups can take general ideas and work them into specific schemas, protocols and other tangible recommendations. The Research Group will

also work with related Working Groups to ensure that overlaps and duplication of efforts are minimized.

Charter: Description

As the Research Group has learned from experience, accounting is a critical and complicated topic. With interested parties coming at the

subject with personal needs and experiences, it is a significant challenge to come up with a single “accounting solution”.

The focus of the Accounting Research Group is to identify accounting issues from system, user, and stakeholder perspectives.

Each of these entities has a need for different accounting information, and much effort is wasted in trying to achieve a

consensus that will enable more concrete development to proceed.

This Research Group will serve as liaison when needed between the various organizations and functional areas that are looking for ways

to address their accounting needs in a grid environment.

Charter: Goals & Milestones• Develop a vision statement that expresses what grid accounting could

look like. This will not necessarily be a “solution” to the grid accounting challenge, but will serve as an initial attempt to document some of the ideas that need to be addressed. (Thigpen/Hacker/McGinnis;GGF6)

• Define other interactions with grid components and existing systems– Overview document of Accounting from the Grid Perspective (; )

– Current/Best practices document (Mi Young Koo, McGinnis; GGF6)

• Identify stakeholder concerns that must be addressed (Mi Young Koo;GGF7 )

– Identify organizations who are participating in GGF; contact them directly for input (Mi Young Koo; GGF6)

• Develop and release a dictionary of accounting terms that all Working Groups can access and contribute to. This will need to have periodic review and an acceptance process so that everyone working on accounting issues has a common language to express accounting concepts (McGinnis; prototype GGF6; release GGF7)

• Promote the development and publication of case studies in accounting

Charter: Consensus?

• Agree on changes to be made. Who will make them?– McGinnis will formalize the charter based on the material

discussed at GGF5 and present it to the RG Chairs (Thigpen, Hacker) and Area Chair (Johnston)

– Once the revisions have been reviewed, they will be posted for comments

• What further action should be taken? Who should take it?– See above for Charter information– See Goals & Milestones for documents to be worked on

Task List

• Vision Statement

• Current/Best Practices

• Account Allocation

• Economies of Exchange

• Usage Records

• Related work in other Areas

Task List: Vision Statement

Task List: Current/Best Practices

Task List: Account Allocation

Task List: Economies of Exchange

Task List: Usage Records

Task List:Related Work

Goal Setting

www.psc.edu/~lfm

Go to the “GGF5 Documents” link(Documents from GGF5 will eventually be incorporated on the accounting-wg site and the mailing list will be notified.)