A Front-End for Collaborative Task Planning on the Grid

Grid systems allow the sharing of distributed resources of registered participants to perform tasks whose demand may exceed the capacity of individual participating organization. However, the collaborative aspect of Grids is still underdeveloped as they lack features and mechanisms for interaction and collaboration. This paper presents the design and development of an integrated Front-End as a workplace for collaborative task planning over a Grid. The Front-End allows parties to design their joint workplan interactively and collaboratively in real time in the form of editing activities and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) workflows. The resulting workplan will be executed by the underlying Grid and forms a basis for further collaboration. The Front-End is in fact the centerpiece of our collaborative Framework within a larger Active Assistive Grid in structure.