What is Gridder?

Gridder is a free, open source set of portlets that simplify the use and administration of grid services, especially for job submission management.
If you want some idea of what Gridder is capable of, take a look at the demo available in this site.

Gridder is specially focused on these goals:

1 | Easy Job Submission

Gridder offers a group of portlets for job management. These portlets are useful for the grid administrator and for the end user.

Let's describe a common scenario:

A chemistry researcher has a new program that makes some complex calculations.
This program can be run on a cluster to improve its performance.
This researcher doesn't want to deal with complex Unix commands for executing this program so he asks the Administrator to install the program in the Grid System and he would expect to be able to execute it through a web page.
Grid Administrator installs the program on the underlying grid system.
Grid Administrator uses Gridder Portlets to set up the new program.
He configures several aspects like parameters, input type, look and feel, etc.
Grid Administrator can also address security restrictions for program execution.
Now the researcher can login into the grid system through a friendly web interface and he is able to execute his program and collect the results.

2 | Provide Useful Resources

Gridder extends and documents the functionality of the OGCE Bundle.
In our Documentation Section you will find very useful documents and UML diagrams including:

First steps for installing a grid system
Selection of best portlets. What they are and how to install them
What GridSphere and OGCE are about
Our recommended grid architecture

3 | Make your grid look good for end users

Grid systems are usually used by science researchers who need resource intensive tasks (like graphics generation or some kind of complex query execution). These users are usually experts on their specific domain, but they have to deal with technical tasks related to computer languages and commands to be able to execute a job on a grid system.
Gridder simplifies this scenario by providing highly usable portlets that feature friendly web interfaces and by customizing the look and feel of open source products in order to provide a consistent look and behaviour, thus taking into account the whole user experience.

Who developed Gridder ?

Gridder was developed by Hexacta (www.hexacta.com) in collaboration with the Complex Systems Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).
Also, this project receives support from the Scientific and Technologic Promotion Agency of Argentina.

History

2005 - Department of Chemistry at UBA University brings to Hexacta the idea of developing software to facilitate the usage of cluster systems.

2005 - Hexacta and UBA’s Complex System Laboratory decide to use Grid Computing technology and define main goals of the product.

2006 - Scientific and Technologic Promotion Agency of Argentina approves sponsorship for the project.

2006 - UBA’s Complex System Laboratory involve IAFE (Astronomy and Space Physics Institute) in the Gridder initiative and the GALA project
(http://www.iafe.uba.ar/astronomia/extrag/html/novedades.html).
They add some valuable requirements.

2007 - The first release of Gridder is available for free download.