Grid computing and active services

Recent activities in Grid computing point in the direction of an open service architecture merging computational infrastructure with Grid services and Web services. We also see advantages in adding facilities offered by distributed object computing environments with their interoperable references and services. The use of open service architectures introduces the possibility of composing structures of nested services. In this paper we discuss architectural aspects of middleware for Grid computing based on an infrastructure of distributed clusters and/or also services, and an access portal as a demonstration project in progress. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.