Res Intro

From EUAGwiki

[edit] Introduction to e-Research and e-Infrastructure

e-Research refers to research activities in all disciplines that are supported by the use of advanced information and communications technologies (ICTs). By advanced ICTs we mean computational, data and communication resources that go beyond normal provisions for everyday desktop computing such as high performance computing facilities, data repositories, multi-party group conferencing facilities, etc.

e-Infrastructure refers to the provision of advanced ICT resource through service providers in a way that they can be used by members of different organisations (or different parts of one organiation). The term is somewhat loosely defined, so it is easier to give examples:

• the [EGEE] infrastructure is the largest multi-disciplinary grid computing infrastructure in the world, providing high throughput compute resources and data management facilities for researchers in many disciplines and from countries across the globe. Other example are the [National Grid Service] in the UK or [TeraGrid] in the US. These are all large networks of resources provided by different organisations but usable by researchers in other institutions.

• Some institutions run campus grids, collections of machines that can be used for computation but may not be run for this purpose alone. For example, an institution may use machines in student labs to run jobs when these are idle.

• Data archives and other data resources are also part of the definition of e-Infrastructures. For example, social science data archives provide researchers with access to many important datasets about social phenomena. In Europe, efforts are underway to link different national archives ([CESSDA]). In Taiwan, the e-Learning and Digital Archive Programme ([TELDAP] provides access to the archives of Academia Sinica, the National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, and many other public and private cultural institutions in Taiwan.

[edit] Glossary of Terms

Cycle Scavenging:	using desktop PCs to solve computational problems using their spare processor cycles when they are not being used. For example, cycle scavenging is used by projects such as [SETI@home] or [Fight AIDS @ home]
Data Archive:	an institution involved in the preservation, curation, dissemination and promotion of data, usually for a research domain or a specific class of data
EGEE:	the largest multi-disciplinary grid infrastructure in the world. For more information, see the [EGEE website].
e-Infrastructure	refers to advanced information and communication technologies and social arrangements that together form an infrastructure for a specific purpose such as research
Grids	are distributed systems that support resource sharing across organisational boundaries
Virtual Organisation:	a group of people working together and sharing resources across organisational boundaries
Virtual Research Environments:	frameworks into which digital resources and tools can be intregrated, often provided as a web portal