Interfacing interactive data analysis tools with the GRID: The PPDG CS-11 activity

For today's physicists, who work in large geographically distributed collaborations, the data grid promises significantly greater capabilities for analysis of experimental data and production of physics results than is possible with today's "remote access" technologies. The goal of letting scientists at their home institutions interact with and analyze data as if they were physically present at the major laboratory that houses their detector and computer center has yet to be accomplished. The Particle Physics Data Grid project (www.ppdg.net) has recently embarked on an effort to "Interface and Integrate Interactive Data Analysis Tools with the grid and identify Common Components and Services". The initial activities are to collect known and identify new requirements for grid services and analysis tools from a range of current and future experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, BaBar, D0, CMS, JLab, STAR, others welcome), to determine if existing plans for tools and services meet these requirements. Follow-on activities will foster the interaction between grid service developers, analysis tool developers, experiment analysis framework developers and end user physicists, and will identify and carry out specific development/integration work so that interactive analysis tools utilizing grid services actually provide the capabilities that users need. This talk will summarize what we know of requirements for analysis tools and grid services, as well as describe the identified areas where more development work is needed.