VLab: Collaborative Grid Services and Portals to Support

Abstract

Abstract: We present the initial architecture and implementation of VLab, a Grid and Web Service-based system for enabling distributed and collaborative computational chemistry and material science applications for the study of planetary materials. The requirements of VLab include job preparation and submission, job monitoring, data storage and analysis, and distributed collaboration. These components are divided into client entry (input file creation, visualization of data, task requests) and backend services (storage, analysis, computation). Clients and services communicate through NaradaBrokering, a publish/subscribe Grid middleware system that abstracts specific hardware information through the use of topics. We describe two aspects of VLab in this paper: 1) data entry and submission, and 2) a visualization web client/service. Grid Web Portals, Java Server Faces (JSF) and JSF Grid Beans are used to build an interface that permits input file specification, multiple code submissions, and multiple job submissions (of a given code) with backend data persistence. In addition, to investigate our collaboration and visualization infrastructure, we have developed a service that transforms a scalar data set into its wavelet representation. A client (java applet) can retrieve the coordinates of the centers of the dominant fraction of the wavelets and display the results as a collection of spheres. General adaptors are placed between the endpoints and NaradaBrokering, which serve to isolate the clients/services from the middleware. This permits client and service development independently of potential changes to the middleware