This document is intended as a starting point for anyone who is going to develop applications using pyGridWare.
The tutorial is divided into 2 main areas:
Getting Started: An introduction to key concepts related with GT4 and the Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF)
GT4 Python Core: A guide to programming basic Web Services which only use the Python WS Core component of GT4.
Please note that the tutorial, at this point, only covers the Python WS Core component of the toolkit, an important but small part of the whole toolkit. At the end of this tutorial you will know how to program stateful Web services using GT4. This will allow you to progress towards using the higher-level services of the toolkit (using official Globus documentation). However it is important to understand that you cannot program Grid-based applications using only the Python WS Core component of the toolkit. This tutorial should be approached as a stepping stone towards more powerful tooling, not as a definite guide on Grid programming.
This tutorial has no GT4 prerequisite documents, since it is intended as a starting point for GT4 programmers. However, you should already be familiar with Grid Computing. A good, short introduction to what Grid Computing is can be found in Ian Foster's paper The Grid: A New Infrastructure for 21st Century Science. A more extense, and very easy to read, introduction can be found at the Grid Café.
For a much more detailed text, you might want to check out the following book: The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (Edited by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman. 2003). Most of the book is easy to read and not too technical. It is also known as "The Grid Bible". With a name like that, you can assume it's worth taking a look at it :-)
You might also be interested in taking a look at the 'Publications' section in the Globus website, specially the documents listed below. However, these documents are rather technical and might be too hard for a beginner. You might want to just skim through them at first, and then reread them once you're familiar with GT4.
The Anatomy of the Grid: Enabling Scalable Virtual Organizations . I. Foster, C. Kesselman, S. Tuecke.
The Physiology of the Grid: An Open Grid Services Architecture for Distributed Systems Integration . I. Foster, C. Kesselman, J. Nick, S. Tuecke.