New Science Gateways for Advanced Computing Simulations and Visualization Using Vine Toolkit in PL-Grid

A Science Gateway is a connection between scientists and their computational tools in the form of web portal. It creates a space for communities, collaboration and data sharing and visualization in a comprehensive and efficient manner. The main purpose of such a solution is to allow users to access the computational resources, process and analyze their data and get the results in a uniform and user friendly way. In this paper we propose a complex solution based on the Rich Internet Application (RIA) approach consisting of a web portal powered by Vine Toolkit with Adobe Flex/BlazeDs technologies. There are two Science Gateways described in detail one for engineers to manage computationally intensive workflows used in advanced airplane construction simulations, and one for nanotechnology scientists to manage experiments in nano-science field calculated with Density Functional Theory (DFT). In both cases the results show how modern web solution can help scientists in their work. &nbsp

BUILDING SCIENCE GATEWAYS BY UTILIZING THE GENERIC WS-PGRADE/GUSE WORKFLOW SYSTEM

Enabling scientists to use remote distributed infrastructures, parametrizeand execute common science-domain applications transparently is actual anda highly relevant field of distributed computing. For this purpose a general so-lution is the concept of Science Gateways. WS-PGRADE/gUSE system offersa transparent and web-based interface to access distributed resources (grids,clusters or clouds), extended by a powerful generic purpose workflow editorand enactment system, which can be used to compose scientific applicationsinto data-flow based workflow structures. It’s a generic web-based portal so-lution to organize scientific applications in a workflow structure and executethem on remote computational resources. As the portal defines nodes as black-box applications uploaded by the users, it does not provide any applicationspecific interface by default. In this paper we show what kind of tools, APIsand interfaces are available in WS-PGRADE/gUSE to customize it to have anapplication specific gateway

A methodology for developing scientific software applications in science gateways

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonDistributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) have emerged as a viable and affordable solution to the computing needs of communities of practice that may require the need to improve system performance or enhance the availability of their scientific applications. According to the literature, the ease of access and several other issues which relate to the interoperability among different resources are the biggest challenges surrounding the use of these infrastructures. The traditional method of using a Command Line Interface (CLI) to access these resources is difficult and can make the learning curve quite steep. This approach can result in the low uptake of DCIs as it prevents potential users of the infrastructures from adopting the technology. Science Gateways have emerged as a viable option that are used to realise the high-level scientific domain-specific user interfaces that hide all the details of the underlying infrastructures and expose only the science-specific aspects of the scientific applications to be executed in the various DCIs. A Science Gateway is a digital interface to advanced technologies which is used to provide adequate support for science and engineering research and education. The focus of this study therefore is to propose and implement a Methodology for dEveloping Scientific Software Applications in science GatEways (MESSAGE). This will be achieved by testing an approach which is considered to be appropriate for developing applications in Science Gateways. In the course of this study, several Science Gateway functionalities obtained from the review of literature which may be utilised to provide services for different communities of practice are highlighted. To implement the identified functionalities, this study utilises the methodology for developing scientific software applications in Science Gateways. In order to achieve this purpose, this research therefore adopts the Catania Science Gateway Framework (CSGF) and the Future Gateway approach to implement the methods and ideas described in the proposed methodology, as well the essential services of Science Gateways discussed throughout the thesis. In addition, three different set of scientific software applications are utilised for the implementation of the proposed methodology. While the first application primarily serves as the case study for implementing the methodology discussed in this thesis, a second application is used to evaluate the entire process. Furthermore, several other real-life scientific applications developed (using two distinctly different Science Gateway frameworks) are also utilised for the purpose of evaluation. Subsequently, a revised MESSAGE methodology for developing scientific software applications in Science Gateways is discussed in the latter Chapter of this thesis. Following from the implementation of both scientific software applications which sees the use of portlets to execute single experiments, a study was also conducted to investigate ways in which Science Gateways may be utilised for the execution of multiple experiments in a distributed environment. Finally, similar to making different scientific software applications accessible and available (worldwide) to the communities that need them, the processes involved in making their associated research outputs (such as data, software and results) easily accessible and readily available are also discussed. The main contribution of this thesis is the MESSAGE methodology for developing scientific software applications in Science Gateways. Other contributions which are also made in different aspects of this research include a framework of the essential services required in generic Science Gateways and an approach to developing and executing multiple experiments (via Science Gateway interfaces) within a distributed environment. To a lesser extent, this study also utilises the Open Access Document Repository (OADR) (and other related technologies) to demonstrate accessibility and availability of research outputs associated with specific scientific software applications, thereby introducing the concept (and thus laying the foundation) of an Open Science research