pyGlobus: a Python interface to the Globus ToolkitTM

Developing high-performance problem solving environments/applications that allow scientists to easily harness the power of the emerging national-scale “Grid” infrastructure is currently a difficult task. Although many of the necessary low-level services, e.g. security, resource discovery, remote access to compute/data resource, etc., are available, it can be a challenge to rapidly integrate them into a new application. To address this difficulty we have begun the development of a Python based high-level interface to the Grid services provided by the Globus Toolkit [ref]. In this paper we will explain why rapid application development using Grid services is important, look briefly at a motivating examle, and finally look at the design and implemenation of the pyGlobus package.