05/09/2007: "Manchester update"

I find it absolutely fascinating that I have managed to do so much work during these last few days away from the office. I have managed to catch up with my reading about ESB's, do a little bit of programming on my SecPAL implementation, respond to all my emails and still attend most meetings and all keynotes here at the OGF.

I had an extensive chat with my colleagues from MS and they seemed quite impressed with my effort to provide first Java implementation of SecPAL. We are still in talks whether I should go ahead and develop a java datalog engine from scratch or alter the current XSB implemetation I have. MS has done a lot of progress in the marketing arena for SecPAL having released 2 articles on the subject to the computing press -acknowledging my efforts- with more publications to follow. We also discussed throughly the idea of using SecPAL on CARMEN. The idea of allowing neuroscientists to express their own security policies on a SecPAL based interface sounds very appealing from an evaluation point of view. My brief presentation about CARMEN and the graphic details i used to describe how data was collected did not make a good lunch conversation topic smile . We spent the evening at a fancy indian restaurant with further drinks at a Cult Tv Series Themed Bar (this was the actual name) which was brilliant. We renewed our meeting date for next October at Redmond/Seattle where the next OGF will be taking place.

OGF itself has been good so far and I think the time is right to make a significant contribution or dare i say a difference in the GRID security arena. Having discussed over the past 20 meetings about the need for logic based authorisation tools, the time is right to introduce SecPAL to a wider audience within the GRID community. My colleague Marty humphrey from Virginia Uni, who has also been evaluating SecPAL has produced a .NET based GridFTP with SecPAL attached to it. I look forward to hearing about people comments on this technology. Apart from the talks and the keynotes the exhibitions have been poor so far (I think this is the general consensus) and not very interesting, the majority of which consists of Wide screen TVs with slides on. I found amusing a particular exhibit that had HD widescreen TVs showing pieces of code! of an GRID api implementation. What is the point of that? smile

On a sour note I bid farewell to my friend Steve L. who is moving to a new post in Japan. I promised to make an effort and visit him after he settles down.