Generic Factory Service Overview

(From the FAQ)
A Generic Factory Service (GFac) is a persistent, stateless service that allows authorized users to create instances of an Application Factory on the Grid. An Application Factory is a service that can create instances of an application on the Grid. An application is an executable (or a script) that can be run from the command line of the machine on which the Application Factory is running. A Service Provider who owns an application and wants to convert it to a "service" can use the GFac to start an Application Factory for his/her application.

The goal is to make it very easy for traditional command line oriented applications to be exposed as Grid Services. This frees application developers from having to know much about Grid Services and provides the benefits of a Grid Services architecture to applications developed without Grid Services in mind.