Integrating Autonomic Grid Components and Process-Driven Business Applications

Today's business applications are increasingly process driven, meaning that the main application logic is executed by a dedicate process engine. In addition, component-oriented software development has been attracting attention for building complex distributed applications. In this paper we present the experiences gained from building a process-driven biometric identification application which makes use of Grid infrastructures via the Grid Component Model (GCM). GCM, besides guaranteeing access to Grid resources, supports autonomic management of notable parallel composite components. This feature is exploited within our biometric identification application to ensure real time identification of fingerprints. Therefore, we briefly introduce the GCM framework and the process engine used, and we describe the implementation of the application using autonomic GCM components. Finally, we summarize the results, experiences, and lessons learned focusing on the integration of autonomic GCM components and the process-driven approach.