Implementation of Geospatial Product Virtualization in Grid Environment

This paper presents the work performed for the implementation of the geospatial product virtualization in the Grid environment. A virtual geospatial product is a product that does not exist in a geospatial data system but the system knows how to create such a product when a user requests the product. We use a two-step approach to the implementation. The first step is to represent a virtual geospatial product by a geospatial processing model and the second step is to convert the model into an executable Grid service workflow and execute the workflow in Grid environment. A geospatial processing model tells conceptually how a type of geospatial products can be produced from raw geospatial data. The conversion from a geospatial processing model to an executable Grid workflow will incorporate the user specifications on the requested product into the workflow. This paper discusses the conceptual model for implementing product virtualization in the Grid environment, the overall architecture of the Grid virtual geospatial product system, service components developed and Globus components extended for the system, and operational considerations of the system.