We are delighted to announce that a beta release for the GRIA 5.3 client is now available for download.

The 5.3 client features a completely redesigned Java API. This should be cleaner, easier to use and more flexible.

Note that GRIA clients and services remain compatible at the SOAP level, so a client written using the new API will still work with GRIA 5.2 services, for example.

New features

• An exciting new feature is built-in support for Groovy, a scripting language with a Java-like syntax.
• A flexible new IdentityProvider API allows you to control exactly which identity should be used for each remote operation. This replaces the static crypto.properties file with a selection of providers (including single-sign-on with Kerberos / Windows Active Directory, and support for writing web portals with multiple concurrent identities).
• Selection of federations (such as SLAs or trade accounts) and tokens (e.g. SAML attributes) to be added to SOAP messages is now handled by the new InvocationEngine system. This can be configured to support very complex scenarios (such as a job service that requires an SLA, which in turn requires a membership token for a group, which can only be obtained using a membership token from another group, and so on).
• A new plugin system. There are now two separate systems: one for extending the proxy system (such as adding support for a new type of service) and one for extending the Swing user interface. This allows proxy plugins to be used on headless systems (where Swing cannot be initialised). The new GridClientPluginManager makes it easy to load GRIA plugins from your own applications.
• Also, there is a new AbstractConversationBrowserPlugin base class which plugins can extend. This avoids the need to implement methods which you don't care about, and ensures that your plugin will still work on newer versions of the client which define additional hooks. Note that the methods plugins must implement have changed. The base class defines all the methods in the old API as "final" so you will get compile-time errors if you forget to update anything.

Feedback

We would appreciate feedback on the new client, which can be sent either to the public GRIA mailing list or (for private correspondence) to the GRIA support email address. Information about both can be found here.

Download GRIA Client 5.3-beta1 now!

About GRIA

GRIA is a service-oriented infrastructure designed to support B2B collaborations through service provision across organisational boundaries in a secure, interoperable and flexible manner. GRIA uses standard web service protocols based on key interoperability specifications. GRIA is now being used in a large number of projects to assess and exploit the use of Grids in business. GRIA provides several software packages and toolkits each created to address the business needs of service consumers and providers. The packages are designed using a service-oriented architecture to support flexible composition scenarios and extensibility.