Design and preliminary analysis of a framework for integrating real and virtual instrumentation within a grid infrastructure

Access to and control of instrumentation was fundamentally part of the original Grid vision. However, the recent trend has emphasized the access to computational resources and storage, neglecting two aspects, namely, access to instruments, as well as the usability of a system becoming more and more complex. Currently, many public-funded efforts are ongoing in order to enhance citizens' lifestyle, in which the Grid plays a role: in this perspective, the overall system must be easy to utilize, being an effective tool also for educational purposes. Besides, integrating instrumentation within the Grid infrastructure poses another issue, specifically, what has to be integrated within the Grid and what has to interact, remaining decoupled from the system for performance and cost reasons. This paper introduces a framework to integrate instrumentation and aggregate it within the Grid infrastructure. In addition, it could be used for providing instrument-oriented services to the Grid infrastructure and for building laboratory experiences. Then, the paper will give some hints for the effective deployment of the proposed architecture, using as a rule of thumb, the development of a framework easy to integrate, extend and utilize.