XCAT Science Portal
Status & Future Work
July 15, 2002
Shava SmallenExtreme! Computing Laboratory
Indiana University
Outline1. Current Status:
a. Architectureb. Case Study: Grappa
i. US-ATLASii. GriPhyN
2. Future Work:a. Recent developments
i. Web portal frameworks & portletsii. Application Factory Web Services (AFWS)iii. Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)
b. xportlets
Motivation
• Lots of Grid tools & services
• Requires a good deal of expertise to– develop an
application– use an application
(more than what many users want to know)• Grid portal:
– web portal by which users can access Grid tools & services
– common approach
XCAT Science Portal screenshot
XCAT Science Portal
• Grid portal framework for building personal science portals
• Active notebook (execution management)– HTML pages to describe the features of the
notebook and how to use it– HTML forms which can be used to launch
parameterizable scripts – Results archived - parameters stored in a
sub-notebook
(previously known as Active Notebook project )
Scripts
• Very flexible• Jython - access to Java
classes– Globus Java CoG kit– XCAT – XMESSAGES
• Not every user has to write scripts
• Notebooks can be shared among users– Import/export capability
jythonscript
app1
portal
Grid
Invoke jython interpreter
Launch app1
parameters
Portal Web Server(tomcat server + java servlets)
JythonIntepreter
NotebookDatabase
GSI Authentication
XCAT Science Portal Architecture
User’s Web Browser
Grid
Case Study: Grappa
• Grappa: Grid access portal for physics applications– provide a Grid portal front-end by which
physicists can manage computation and data
• Joint work with Rob Gardner’s group (IU Physics & U. of Chicago Physics)– Part of the ATLAS collaboration (US-
ATLAS)
• Subproject of Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN)
ATLAS • Detector for the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN
• 2000 physicists, 150+ universities & laboratories, 34 countries• Expected to be on-line in 2006
• Why the Grid?– Raw data: 2 PB/yr – Analysis: 8 PB/yr
• Participant in several Grid projects: LCG, GridPP, INFN Grid, DataGrid, PPDG, GriPhyN/IVDGL
ATLAS detector
XCAT Science Portal & ATLAS
• Athena = ATLAS software framework • Athena Notebook Prototype/Demo
– ATLAS Software Week (March)– Allow user to submit sequence of Athena job
options files to US-ATLAS testbed resources– File staging, remote job option file editing,
basic monitoring, ad-hoc viz– Packaged with Pacman – installed with single
command
• Distributed to US-ATLAS testbed this month– Interactive jobs– Production – scripting interface to launch and
portal to monitor
GriPhyN: Grid Physics Network
• Targets data-intensive applications – ATLAS, CMS, LIGO, and SDSS
• Provide a set of tools for collaborative data analysis– 90% of data is derived– Virtual data - transparency with respect
to location and materialization• Data replicated & distributed – transfer or
recompute
Virtual Data Browser
• Search virtual data• Publish virtual
data: create transformations and derivations
Application
Planner
Executor
Catalog Services
Info Services
Policy/Security
Monitoring
Repl. Mgmt.
Reliable TransferService
Compute Resource Storage Resource
DAG
DAG
• User Profile – bookmarks, credential mgmt, resource mgmt, etc.
Provide functionality analogous to that of a web browser
Outline1. Current Status:
a. Architectureb. Case Study: Grappa
i. US-ATLASii. GriPhyN
2. Future Work:a. Recent developments
i. Web portal frameworks & portletsii. Application Factory Web Services (AFWS)iii. Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)
b. xportlets
Web Portal Frameworks
• Separation of appearance & functionality– User customization of
appearance (multi-user support)
– Functionality packaged into portlets
• Examples: IBM Websphere, Apache Jetspeed, etc.
• Many Grid portal efforts • Encourages interoperability
Jetspeed screenshot
Application Factories
• Applications are difficult to deploy– Libraries, licensing, environment setup, etc.– E.g., Athena: 10 GB library, Redhat 6.1
• Web services approach– XCAT implementation– App. factory web service (AFWS) is a stateless,
persistent service and launches one instance of the application
– Distributed component applications• Both individual components and composite
application are web services
WSRP Specification
• Web Services for Remote Portals• Generic proxy portlet
– Talks to any remote WSRP-enabled web service
• Web service handles content• WSRP web service registry• Advantage?
– No installation required; just contact WSRP web service
Putting It Together
AFWSRegistry
app1
Application coordinator
Application instance
(1)
(2)
(3)(4)
(5)
(6)(7)
GridPortal
AFWSproxy portlet
Notebook(s)
AFWS
jython scripts
Archiving(sub-notebooks)
Portal
Grid
AFWS = Application Factory Web Service
xportlets
• Use Jetspeed as web portal framework– Open source from apache
• xportlets – bundle of portlets– AFWS proxy portlet– MyProxy portlet– Xmessages pull– GridFTP File Browser
• Scripting API to create Application Factories – Different kinds – XCAT, notebooks, etc.
Summary
• Current XCAT Science Portal architecture– Active notebooks, scripts
• Case Study: Grappa– US-ATLAS– GriPhyN
• Redesign to portlet & web services architecture– Jetspeed takes care of presentation– Interoperability – pluggable into any portlet-
enabled portal framework– Easy deployment – web services & generic
proxy
More Information
• Extreme! Computing Laboratory:http://www.extreme.indiana.edu
• XCAT Science Portal:http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xcatsp
• Grappa:http://iuatlas.physics.indiana.edu/grappa
• xportlets: (coming soon…)http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xportlets
• Email:[email protected]