Building a Grid System Using WS-Resource Transfer, Part 5: Using WS-RT

The WS-RT standard provides a new method for accessing and exchanging
information about resources between components. It is designed to
enhance the WS-Resource Framework (WSRF) and build on the WS-Transfer
standards. The WS-RT system extends previous resource solutions for
Web services and makes it easy not only to access resource information
by name but also to access individual elements of a larger data set
through the same mechanisms by exposing elements of an XML data set
through the Web services interfaces. In any grid, there is a huge amount
of metadata about the grid that needs to be stored and distributed.
Using WS-RT makes sharing the information, especially the precise
information required by different systems in the grid, significantly
easier. This article concludes the five-part "Building a grid system
using WS-Resource Transfer" series. Let's revisit some key elements of
the WS-RT system and how we've used it throughout the series to work
as a flexible solution for different grid solutions. The key to the
WS-RT system is the flexible method with which we can create and
recover information within its repository. Technically, WS-RT is not
seen as a general-purpose solution for the storage and recovery of
information, but, in fact, the XML structure and the ease with which
we can process information by using the QName and XPath dialects to
extract and update the information makes it a flexible and
easy-to-manipulate system for information storage and distribution.
It can be used on a number of levels, as we've seen throughout the
series, from the fundamentals of information storage to the
organization and definition of security information, and for the
distribution of work throughout the grid system. Using the flexible
nature of WS-RT makes the distribution of work easy and allows us to
bypass some of the problems and limitations that exist in other grid
systems.