Status report: IVOA WG on grid and web services The group has produced "IVOA Standard Interfaces v0.1" as a working draft. This document describes standard interfaces to be prescribed for all IVOA services. The document is under discussion on the WG's mailing-list and is available from the WG's area of the wiki-web at http://www.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/IvoaGridAndWebServices/StandardInterfaces-0.1.pdf This document will be moved into the standards track, and re-posted on the appropriate area of the wiki web, within the next few days. The document "IVOA SkyNode Interface", which is the most-complete description of an IVOA-standard web-service, is being looked after by the VOQL WG. At the Strasbourg meeting last October, the WG agreed that early adoption of OGSI would not be wise. Instead, the consensus was to watch developments with OGSI while proceeding with conventional web-service technology. This approach seems to have paid off: OGSI seems set to mutate and merge with web-service standards, so any early work done by IVOA would have been made obsolete. The new standards for grid services are promoted by the Globus Alliance, IBM, HP, Sonic Software and TIBCO; see http://www.ivoa.net//forum/grid/0079.htm for the press announcement. The new developments in grid services are to be discussed at a meeting in London on 28th January; our WG will be represented. The other priorities of the group are standards for access control to services and standards for asynchronous operations on services, particularly asynchronous queries. No progress has been made on defining these mechanisms, and we must start serious discussions in 1Q2004. -- Guy Rixon, 2004-01-21