A Guide to Transparency in Five Research Metasystems

Metasystems are geographically distributed networks of heterogeneous computers on which a user can run very large program sets and parallel programs. We explain the concept of transparency and how it is presented to a metasystem client in five active research metasystems. We also judge the extent to which this transparency will benefit the novice and the expert user. We consider transparency in terms of five general areas: resource discovery, resource management, security, user interface, and fault tolerance. In general, resource discovery has sufficient transparency for both expert and novice users; however, the research metasystems under consideration differ widely in their implementations of the other four areas. We discuss the differences in those areas. Based on our findings, we describe the metasystems we would build to suit our user profile.