5.2 E-research glossary

In this section we define a number of terms used in the Research in a Connected World book. We have aimed to keep these definitionssimple to aid understanding of the core concepts rather than trying to come up with definitive definitions of what are often very complex and ill-definedconcepts.

Cloud

An infrastructure that makes use of virtualisation technologies to provide on- demand services to users. Clouds provide access to dynamically scalableresources reserved for individual users within a shared infrastructure. Like grids, clouds can be private (in-house), community-specific or public. Access toclouds is often provided through web services .

Grid

A type of distributed computing infrastructure. Grids can exist within organisations (private grids, campus grids) but often span organisationalboundaries. The The EGEE grid infrastructure is an example of an international grid infrastructure.

Ontology

A description of a set of concepts and their relationships within a given domain. Ontologies can be used as a basis for automatic reasoning.

RDF

Resource Description Framework: a set of specifications for data representation that facilitate the conceptual representation of data by forming subject-predicate-object style expressions. RDF is a core component of the Semantic Web

REST(-ful) Service

A web service that follows specific architectural principles. More often than not, REST-ful services areimplementing the standard (External Link) .

Semantic Web

The plan to 'semantically annotate' data that is available on the web, thus enabling it to be processed more automatically. An example is that a postal address would not be just written like an address (making it recognisable by a human reader as an address) but also be 'tagged' so that a computer can relate the data to the concept of a postal address.

Web Service

A service that can be invoked across a network using an machine-to-machine interface that ensures interoperability across system boundaries.

WSDL

Web Services Description Language: a language used to describe web service interfaces, specifying the methods availableand their parameters.