However, current PKI implementations suffer from serious usability issues in terms of end-user acquisition and management of credentials, something which grid security inherits from its PKI foundation.
This combination of Web browser access and Grid computing requires passing user credentials throughout the federation system to transport user requests from the HTTP layer to the middleware execution layer.
Its green credentials stand up: off grid, solar-powered, built with local materials.
The credential type depends on the underlying security model of the resource in question (e.g. a password for a MySQL database or a X.509 certificate for a Grid resource).
For instance, a user of one community may have access to files within its community stored on different grid systems, but also may cooperate with another community and thus have separate credentials to access some files of the other community.
The interface, which you can see in the screenshots below, makes this pretty straightforward: once you've entered your Google Calendar credentials, you'll see vertical yellow-tinged bars hovering over Hipmunk's flight search grid.
