The project goes beyond the current status of grid technology in the following areas:

• In the EU-sponsored UniGrids and NextGrid projects and the D-Grid 1 project InGrid, the technical and organisational basic concepts for service grids were developed to the point where the creation of a grid-based service environment for a clearly outlined user group is today possible. Conceptually, a service grid of this type is based on providing every user with a service environment that makes all required IT tools (hard- and software) available within a standardised environment. This requires that the necessary conditions for a service-oriented architecture have been created both on the resource provider’s and the user’s side. If this is not the case, access can be provided through web portals. The project suggested here aims to implement these concepts for the first time in a production environment working to economic principles and designed for long-term utilisation.
• The integration of a provenance service means calculations performed in AeroGrid are automatically documented and traceable. Recording “provenance information”, i.e. complete information on the individual processing steps applied to data, improves the reliability of results for AeroGrid users (“Trusted Grid”). The provenance service used in this project was developed within the EU project Grid Provenance, and is to be made available to all interested grid projects within the D-Grid Initiative through the AeroGrid project in co-ordination with the D-Grid integration project. A service of this type is of interest to a number of projects (particularly from the medical field, such as the MediGrid project) where the reliability and integrity of generated and processed data is important.
  
• In order to achieve an efficient and flexible use of resources (computers, networks, software licences where applicable), all deployed components, i.e. applications, grid middleware, and the resource management and scheduling systems, must co-operate closely with each other. Based on the middleware components of the DGI integration project and the system components available on the existing computer systems, AeroGrid performs an exemplary integration of this type, which is transparent to the end user, for aeronautics applications. Any additionally required tools are selected according to these requirements.