OGSA is a distributed interaction and computing architecture based around services, assuring interoperability on heterogeneous systems so that different types of resources can communicate and share information.
OGSA is based on several other Web service technologies, such as the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), but it aims to be largely independent of transport-level handling of data.
OGSA has been described as a refinement of a Web services architecture, specifically designed to support grid requirements.
[1] The concept of OGSA is derived from work presented in the 2002 Globus Alliance paper "The Physiology of the Grid" by Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman, Jeffrey M. Nick, and Steven Tuecke.
[2] It was developed by GGF working groups which resulted in a document, entitled The Open Grid Services Architecture, Version 1.5 in 2006.