The Integrasoft IGF is the first step towards a Distributed Data Management System.

IGF, in its most basic form is an abstraction layer to distributed infrastructure. Cartridges are defined for both Compute and Data Grids; however this version if IGF is focused on Data Management in Grid. Through these cartridges, a common, well-known data access pattern is supported. The user of IGF only works with these cartridges and their common data access patterns. It is the job of IGF to translate the common data access pattern to the specific data cache (or any other data distribution engine) that lies underneath.

Today IGF Provides

• Common programming access patterns (e.g. lists, maps, and collectables)
• Abstraction Layer to any data distribution engine. Today IGF has bindings to Tangosol and GemFire (Monte Carlo Schema Only)
• Variable Data “Granularity” to maximize data access in the Data Grid.

o Course (big objects)
o exact Navigation via distributed collection classes (e.g. lists and maps)
o Fine Grained Access through basic elements (e.g. ints, strings, date, ..)

• Enables Business Schemas as the Data Models for the Data Grid
• Comes with Monte Carlo Data Schemas
• Supports Data Management in Grid

o Logical grouping of data sets called Regions
o Regions have “schema”. Specifically the schema of the business application.
o Insertion points to affect the Distributed Data Management Patters for Regions and the structures contained in the Region.
o Insertion Points for the abstraction of Task Management (e.g. Compute Grids)

IGF’s Foundation

Starting in 2002 Integrasoft and its founder Michael Di Stefano promotes Grid and Data Management in Grid. Integrasoft offered the first User Group on Wall Street The Data Grid Users’ Group

And authored a book “Distributed Data Management for Grid Computing” published by John Wiley and Sons in 2005.

Many of the principles of Data Grid and Data Management in Grid expressed in the book, and in the IGF product are real-world feedback from the user community via our customers, the User Group, and other vendors in the Grid market.

IGF’s Future is Open Soruce!

Integrasoft has spent considerable time and effort to lay the foundation of IGF. Now we ask the community to continue to build and mature IGF based on practical real-world need and experience.

Some of the more difficult questions to answer are

• Management of distributed collections when it comes to deleting and behavior for iterating when items have been deleted.
• Entitlements, Granularity of Entitlements, and how to enforce entitlements without impacting performance
• IGF Bindings for GemFire, GigaSpaces, files systems, and even databases
• And Much More

All of these questions must not be done in a vacuum which is why Integrasoft is Open Sourcing IGF for the community to build, use, and promote the adoption of Grid!