A number of different software architectures are emerging within the
Grid world, which often leaves the application programmer confused
about precisely which one will give the optimum solution for their
particular problem. As a consequence, a number of application
developers are waiting to see which technology becomes the most widely
accepted, standardized and stable before they undertake the Grid
enabling process. The GridLab project (www.gridlab.org) aims to this
remove this confusion and underlying instability by creating an
application-level API called the GAT (Grid Application Toolkit). The
GAT provides a middleware independent view of the Grid that can be
used by any application to transparently access to the functionality
of a wide number of differing Grid services. GridLab is also
developing a number of higher level services that sit on top of
existing middleware to provide monitoring, adaptive components,
resource brokering, scheduling, security and graphical interface
portals for submitting, monitoring and viewing the application’s
progress on the Grid. This talk will give an overview of the Gridlab
architecture and its corresponding services, illustrating these using
an example from one of the two GAT-driving applications, Triana. The
flexibility of this architecture is demonstrated by showing how Triana
can dynamically reconfigure itself depending on which middleware
environment it is running within. Finally, the current status of the
Gat implementation will be given along with future directions of the
project.