myGrid Taxonomy of Users

We needed to know which kinds of users might encounter myGrid, either directly or indirectly. myGrid users will range from system administrators, who might install and run a myGrid server; through various kinds of biologist who might use tools that run over myGrid, to tools builders of various kinds who might use myGrid directly within their programming tasks. The Figure below shows a picture of the myGrid taxonomy.

The basic division of myGrid users is into those with a knowledge of biology and those with a knowledge of computers.

We think we will meet three kinds of biologist:

1. An occasional bioinformatics user, who might occasionally use a single service. This group will not perform or construct complex workflows or perform complex bioinformatics tasks
2. Restricted bioinformatics users, who might well perform very complex, sophisticated bioinformatics analyses, but will only perform, usually repeatedly, that narrow range of tasks or single complex task.
3. A bioinformatician has both biological and computer knowledge. A bioinformatician can perform ad hoc analyses using a wide range of tools, often in complex configurations.

We have four kinds of users with computer knowledge:

1. A bioinformatician has both computer and biology knowledge. this user has been described above.
2. Tool Builders -- Users who build tools and applications that work over myGrid. We have divided these into Component builders and Component Assemblers. the former take pre-existing components and join them together to build tools and applications. Individual components might use myGrid or the application might access myGrid in its own right.
3. System Administrators -- users who wish to install a myGrid service to support their customers. Also people who support isntallations of services that can accessed by a myGrid service. Finally, users who install and support bioinformatics resources that might use myGrid.
4. Service providers -- users who wish to provide services that are able to work within a myGrid service.

-- AnilWipat - 04 Jan 2003