Demonstration of Grid Technologies

Given the many attributes of the public health community; wide distribution of public health data, rapid growth of public health data, social and political impediments to data sharing, and significant and chronic financial constraints, an innovative solution, such as distributed computing, may be able to significantly augment the activities of the PHIN community.

 

This session will provide a live demonstration of GRID computing, including the real-time visualization of node status using open-source software  (http://monalisa.caltech.edu/), as well as real-time access and integration of data from separate sources leveraging GRID technologies (distributed computing).  One of the core components of this demonstration will be the use of OGSA-DAI (Open Grid Services Architecture Data Access & Integration).  OGSA-DAI is an open-source middleware product (http://www.ogsadai.org.uk/index.php) which supports the exposure of data resources, such as relational or XML databases, on to grids. Various interfaces are provided and many popular database management systems are supported.  This demonstration leverages the combined efforts of CDC's NCPHI, Univ. Pittsburgh, the UK, and the Dallas County and Tarrant County health departments in Texas.