Grid Computing is quite useful to distributed computing infrastructure and a grid is a collaborative domain that spans multiple networks and organizations, facilitating, secure, and efficient sharing of the data and services needed for collaboration. From Application perspective, the application developers can tackle the new challenges in Grid Computing by understanding various Grid programming paradigms, Grid Middleware and widely used Globus Tool Kit. The goal is to solve complex application problems using largest grid-based HPC infrastructure with data management facilities.

To meet this goal, C-DAC's technology training programme (Tech. Trng. Prog.) is designed to provide comprehensive coverage on the state-of-the-Art of Grid Programming with special emphasis on Globus Tool Kit & C-DAC's Grid GARUDA technologies in a clear and concise manner. The Betatesting Group, National PARAM Supercomputing Facility (NPSF), C-DAC designed and developed the the FIRST Technology Training (Tech. Trng. Prog.) Programme for C-DAC members and close collaborators. The Group seeks to enhance the knowledge quotient of member through training on technically advanced concepts and techniques.

The idea of conducting technology training programme is originated from our C-DAC's experience on High Performance Computing and Grid Computing - GARUDA Projects and important references ( Grid Comp. Projects,   Grid Middleware Tools,   Grid Prog. Env.,   Grid Probes-Benchmarks,   Commodity Grid Toolkits (CoG Kit),   Res. Artciles/Tech. Reports,   Grid & Web Services ) are included in this. Some of the popular Grid projects such as US's The National Science Foundation's Tera Grid and UK e-Sicence Programme helped us in many ways to build expertise on Grid Middleware and Grid Programming. To quickly understand Grid Computing Technology (GARUDA), our Director General Shri S.Ramakrishnan motivated us to conduct extensive Tech. Trng. Prog. which will attempt to alleviate problems of understanding Grid Computing Middleware and Grid Programming Paradigms to solve diversified applications. The focus is to understand various programming paradigms and write programs using Globus Tool Kit to solve various scientific and commercial applications.

The soft-copy of presentations, Hands-on Session codes are aimed at Technical Staff in C-DAC, or any practicing Grid Programming user who has no background in Distributed computing but wishes to understand the fundamental principles of Grid Programming and use this knowledge to tackle his or her own research problems. By reading the study material and understanding the codes provided in this Tech. Trng. Prog. , the user or reader will become familiar with various Grid programming paradigms and also become aware of strengths and weaknesses of Programming on Grid Infrastructure.

The reader or user is assumed to have a basic understanding of Programming languages and exposure to Parallel Processing Programming is preferable but not essential. The Tech. Trng. Prog. is organized into different sections focusing on Grid Middleware as discussed in GRIPSI 2007 Overview. The Hands-on Session is conducted on Grid laboratory. Each Class-room lecture is closely associated with Hands-on Session Programs and a summary is also provided for each program.

Some of the programs described in this Tech. Trng. Prog. are several programs that are available on many web-sites and books that are mentioned in the references. For beginners it is a starting journey and for experts, it may be only half the journey & there is a scope to build expertise on Grid Computing, a journey that is left. For more details, please refer The Globus Project web-page and The Tera Grid Project that has rich set of Grid programs, and Tutorials of Grid Computing.

Most of the programs are rather straightforward to use in that the user only needs to understand description of Grid programs and the Globus commands used. The user also has to make special efforts to learn the intricacies of using the Globus technologies and user can refer to Globus web-site. Some of the programs are not user-friendly and it requires sufficient time to understand and analyze the results. However, it would be impractical to address several ways that are required for these programs as well as the associated software programs. Nonetheless, having realized the difficulties of beginners of Grid Programming who are often unaware of or, more precisely, intimated by the numerous software programs available, we have provided a number of practical exercises in the Hands-on Session with detailed step-by-step explanation that aim to serve as a examples to quickly adapt to 'Grid Programming using Globus 4.0 Tool Kit & GARUDA " in order to solve application problems. The Hands-on Session examples can be used on Grid Infrastructure with Globus 4.X Toolkit or GARUDA. However, they can be used with slight modifications on different Grid Middleware. We have chosen to present our programs using the Globus 4.X Tool Kit. This is most accessible and all programs in this have been compiled and tested on Grid Laboratory. The Grid Programming is still evolving and inclusion of scripting languages with Globus APIs are now available. Our experience using Globus 4.X Tool Kit is excellent in GRIPSI 2007 Hands-on Session.

In the course of preparing the C-DAC's Tech. Trng. Prog., we consulted numerous original articles, books, important web-sites, attended many tutorials as listed in references ( Grid Comp. Projects,   Grid Middleware Tools,   Grid Prog. Env.,   Grid Probes-Benchmarks,   Commodity Grid Toolkits (CoG Kit),   Res. Artciles/Tech. Reports,   Grid & Web Services ) related to certain topics and programs on Grid Computing. For inclusion of programs using Globus Tool Kit , we have covered only few out of large number of programs available on the internet sites and in books. We apologize for not being able to acknowledge all the resources in our References due to space and time constraints and for any personal bias in the selection of algorithms and software programs used in the Hands-on Session. We would thank our Director General for providing this opportunity of letting us to conduct C-DAC's Tech. Trng. Prog. GRIPSI 2007 which is what made this event possible. We are especially grateful to Director General of C-DAC, and C-DAC Director, Hyderabad for active participation in GRIPSI 2007.

We would like to thank all my colleagues from C-DAC and some of my colleagues were kind enough to share their expertise on Grid Computing - GARUDA with me, which provided us with diverse research problems with which we could improve on Grid Programming. We also thanks to C-DAC's groups (Advanced Computing & Marketing Solution Group, National PARAM Super Computing Facility Group) who assisted us and provided many numerous suggestions for this event. We are also indebted to my former colleagues of C-DAC, distinguished faculty members whom we worked with and C-DAC's Director General who gave me the wonderful opportunity to learn Grid Computing technologies which essentially launched this event. It was a great pleasure for us, to work with C-DAC's GARUDA groups at C-DAC Bangalore and C-DAC, Pune for their diligent efforts in overseeing various Grid computing activities.