Big enhancements to caGrid federation infrastructure

I've mentioned the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) project before. It's goal is "to develop applications and the underlying systems architecture that connects together data, tools, scientists and organizations in an open federated environment." Underpinning caBIG is a service oriented infrastructure, caGrid, which is in turn built on Globus software.

The caBIG project announced today the release of version 1.2 of caGrid core infrastructure, with  enhancements such as

• A simplified Grid Transfer Service to handle large scale data transfer for grid-based queries
• Integration with the latest releases of Software Development Kit (SDK) and Common Security Module (CSM)
• Availability of a new Web based Single Sign On Framework, called WebSSO, for providing single sign on capability for web based applications integrated with caGrid GAARDs security infrastructure, based on collaboration with the caBIG Clinical Trials Suite (CCTS) team from the Clinical Trials Management Systems Workspace
• Substantial improvements to usability of tools such as Introduce Toolkit based on user feedbackI
• ntegration with Apache Ivy build system for improved dependency management of sub components within the caGrid core infrastructure
• Early preview to integration with the Taverna Workbench for developing workflows, based on collaboration with the Integrative Cancer Research Workspace
• Backward compatible with the caGrid 1.0 and caGrid 1.1

My colleagues Ravi Madduri and Wei Tan at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory have been very involved in this work, in particular the integration with Taverna.