Overview
GRACE stands for Glue Research and Academic Computing Environment, and it is designed to help meet some of the information technology needs of faculty, students, and reseachers at the University of Maryland. Because the needs of different members of campus can be diverse, different users might have different views about what GRACE is. But it provides students, faculty, and researchers with:
- A modest amount of network accessible file storage, with a standardized directory layout. Read and read/write access to the file store is depends on the directory and the user's role in the class/project.
- Web pages for the class/project, with content restricted to members of the class/project.
- Compute machines where students can compile code and run programs.
- An Oracle database for use by students
- A web based application for instructors to request/manage their GRACE spaces.
- Command line scripts for students to submit classwork via GRACE.
GRACE class and project spaces are created upon request. For academic classes following the normal semester calendar, the instructor of record for the course can request space using the web based management application. All such classes are automatically entitled to a GRACE space.
GRACE projects are for academic classes, research projects, etc. that do not follow the standard semester calendar. These can also be requested using the web based management application, but because of their non-standard nature must be approved by a Division of Information Technology staff person first. Although anyone at the University may request GRACE project space, students are advised that their requests are more likely to be approved in a timely fashion if they have their faculty advisor make the request. Projects which have an extended lifetime will need to be renewed by the requestor once a year.
