gCube Open Source Software System

gCube is a Software System designed and implemented to enable the building and operation of a Service Oriented Infrastructure supporting the definition of Virtual Research Environments (VREs). Such system is capable to exploit and simplify the access to the largest Grid infrastructure currently existing, i.e. the one operated by the European Grid for E-sciencE project (EGEE). A Service Oriented Infrastructures is an infrastructure developed according to the Service Orientation principles, this reflects in facilities for the re-usability and dynamic allocation of the resources forming the infrastructure itself. A Virtual Research Environment is the materialization of a very flexible and agile application development model based on the notion of Software as a Service (SaaS) in which components may be bound instantly, just at the time they are needed and then the binding may be discarded. According to it, user communities are enabled to define their own applications by simply selecting the application constituents (the services, the collections, the machines) among the pool of resources made available through the infrastructure. The cost of operating each defined VRE is completely outsourced to the infrastructure that by applying economies of scale to the operation of the applications (sharing and re-use) can offer better, cheaper and more reliable applications than single communities can themselves.