"We are happy with this new record", stated Ad Emmen editor-in-chief of Primeur/EnterTheGrid magazine and EnterTheGrid.com. "It shows that over the years Primeur/EnterTheGrid is becoming more and more a valuable and reliable resource on what is happening in the HPC/Grid arena."

With Primeur/EnterTheGrid magazine, readers get the latest news in their e-mail box. "We have run this as a paying service for subscribers, for many years even during the Internet hype", said Ad Emmen. "We see that people are now realising more and more, that information is not for free."

Recently, Primeur/EnterTheGrid has started beta-testing for a new service that extends the publicly available EnterTheGrid catalogue. Subscribers to this new database service get access to the complete database and all kinds of analysis tools, enabling them to view the Grid marketing info they need and to keep track of all the projects, companies, and products that are available in this dynamic market.

Currently, the EnterTheGrid catalogue is the largest Grid catalogue in the world. There are however, many more that exist. Some are very good, because they are maintained by people administering a number of projects. A lot of catalogues are merely lists of projects and products put together when a web site was started. These tend to get out of date very soon, because of the dynamic character of the Grid. What EnterThe Grid proposes is a collaboration that is beneficial to organisations that maintain original information sources and a way to finance a really complete Guide to the Grid.

There are many organisations who own Grid related information sources. The UK eScience Centre, the NSF, and the EU are examples of organisations that administer a large number of projects. They also have web sites for their users with specific needs. They not only provide information on their own projects, which is pretty accurate, but also information and links to related projects and other places of interest.

Other information sources exist, like the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, that are of interest too. Imagine that on the UK site, the UK supercomputers were automatically listed when a new TOP500 list appeared. Imagine that when there is a new large Knowledge Grid project started by the NSF, automatically a short description would appear on the UK site. That would be nice. But what is holding us back? Problem is that everyone has a different format of storing and publishing information. Today, everything has to be copied in by hand. That is just too much work.

However, with today's XML-technology it can be organised in an easy way. All project descriptions are translated to one XML-format. Also the other information is translated into an appropriate XML-format. If you then can read one project decription, you can read them all. What you need then is a registry of all the project list maintainers and off you go. Call it web services if you like, or even Grid information services, but it already exists today with EnterTheGrid which is implemented in XML + MPEG-7 + XSLT.

The basic idea is to make your information available to the peering-partners. In return, you get access to the peering partners in the same usable format. Of course, to become a partner, you must own a substantial or important database. The information will also be made available on the EnterTheGrid web site.

For a four-week trial subscription to Primeur/EnterTheGrid, send an e-mail with your name, e-mail address, and organisation details to: primeur@hoise.com.

The public EnterTheGrid catalogue can be visited on: http://EnterTheGrid.com.