[sldev] [SVC] What is a Grid? (Searching for a hard definition)

[ordinal.malaprop at fastmail.fm]

I think the current definition is quite good, for SL. I have been  
having to explore the concept of "grid" in relation to both SL and  
opensims and, more specifically, the opensim "hypergrid" system, and  
what I have come down to is "the combination of (a) one or more region  
and (b) overall identity, asset management and other global systems".

Of course, opensim and SL deal with issues in different ways in any  
case so exactly what is done by (a) and what by (b) will be different.  
And the hypergrid thing splits everything up into multiple (a)s and  
(b)s, hosted anywhere you like. But if I was trying to explain what  
"the Grid" was to somebody new and not very technical, I would be  
waffling along the lines of "it's made up of regions, which are laid  
out in a grid pattern, and each region has an individual program that  
handles things that happen in that region - and there are also  
underlying databases to handle things that aren't tied to a region,  
like your inventory. And they all talk to each other."


On 5 Feb 2009, at 06:19, zai wrote:

> eeps, that one went off list... again:
>
>
> eerrr... I see I should clarify.
> So the question I meant was: What is meant by the word "Grid" in  
> context
> to SL, in some easy understandable way so it fits in the
>
> https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land#Grid
>
> article. (Please don't answer with a link to
> http://secondlifegrid.net/ )
>
> We got:
> Gareth:
> "A collection of servers which collectively work together to provide
> the services required to operate a full virtual world."
>
> Dahlia (off-list reply):
> How about something along the lines of "A collection of 256x256x(some
> big number) regions arranged on a cartesian plane which share common
> back end support services such as asset and inventory storage,  
> presence,
> and communications."
>
> as well as the two Wikipedia links and the initial definition I used  
> in
> the article.
>
> I think Gareth is something intuitivly understandable although maybe  
> not
> very specific. In Dahlias version, the numbers are confusing me. Can a
> grid contain of just one region? I guess it can...
>
> I got confused when a friend mentioned that OpenSim got StandAlone-  
> and
> Grid-mode so what is a sim _without_ a grid... Sorry to bother this  
> list
> with my pondering as it won't help with developement and is just some
> documentation issue.
>
> Greetz,
> zai
>
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