This book is a collection of papers presented at the International Conference on Distributed and Parallel Systems (DAPSYS) 2008, with a focus on grid computing. Grid computing has emerged as a hot topic of discussion in the computer science (CS) community. Some people use the terms “grid computing” and “cloud computing” interchangeably. The book is divided into five parts, each focusing on a specific area. The first part deals with desktop grids, whereas grid applications are dealt with in the next part. Research areas, such as resource management and scheduling, are presented in the third part. Programming environments, security, and database issues are dealt with in the fourth part. The last part concerns other issues, such as quality of service (QoS) in the context of grid computing. The book presents original research and excellent results.

Unlike some conference proceedings, this book has a list of concise and focused research papers. The first part, about desktop grids, shows how to port existing applications to the grid framework. There is a lot of effort to develop an application programming interface (API) that hides the underlying grid environment and requires minimal modifications to existing applications. The papers can be independently read and no prerequisites are required.

The second part deals with applications and is very interesting. It contains papers on topics such as medical systems, climate change, and library management systems. The design of medical software, such as for diagnosing and treating eye mobility disorders, is discussed, using grid middleware software. Performance benchmark results are also discussed, along with software design. Earth science, with its huge datasets, is also ideal for grid processing. Processing of data, searching, discovering, managing, and accessing this data and metadata are illustrated in a paper that deals with climate change.

The third part deals with research issues within grid systems, such as a fair scheduling algorithm. The authors propose a fair execution time estimation algorithm and compare it with other algorithms. The results are nicely illustrated with graphs and detailed descriptions. Other papers in the third section are equally engaging and will be of interest to doctoral students and academic researchers, as compared to the papers in the first two sections that will be of interest to industry researchers.

A paper by scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Department of Energy (DOE) highlights application of grid computing in a secure environment. It is one of the most fascinating papers in the book. The final section covers issues such as QoS, fault tolerance, and checkpointing in the context of grid computing.

The papers in the book are very well balanced, with the right amount of mathematical models, experimental analysis, and real-world applications. The book can be used as a reference for academics and industry researchers. As parallel and distributed computing paradigms are adapted to grid computing (sometimes referred to as volunteer or cloud computing), the field will mature; conferences such as DAPSYS bring researchers together, and books such as this one consolidate the work done in the field.