RSD (Resource and Service Description) is a software architecture for specifying, registering and accessing resources and services in complex heterogeneous computing environments. It has three major components: a graphical resource editor, a compiler system for translating textual specifications, and an application programming interface. In this paper we focus on the language definition and the compiler system that generates portable data objects for registering and accessing distributed resources. We also present the mechanism used by RSD to maintain information on the status of dynamic resources such as CPU load or network bandwidth. RSD is a purely descriptive tool that provides up-to-date information on system resources. Other tools, like resource brokers, mappers or job migrators, build on it.

We present a software system for the management of geographically distributed high-performance computers. It consists of three components: 1. The Computing Center Software (CCS) is a vendor-independent resource management software for local HPC systems. It controls the mapping and scheduling of interactive and batch jobs on massively parallel systems; 2. The Resource and Service Description (RSD) is used by CCS for specifying and mapping hardware and software components of (meta-)computing environments. It has a graphical user interface, a textual representation and an object-oriented API; 3. The Service Coordination Layer (SCL) co-ordinates the co-operative use of resources in autonomous computing sites. It negotiates between the applications' requirements and the available system services. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.