A Collaborative e-Science Architecture towards a Virtual Research Environment Tran Vu Pham 1, Dr. Lydia MS Lau 1, Prof. Peter M Dew 2 & Prof. Michael J Pilling 3 1 School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK 2 Informatics Institute, School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds UK 3 School of Chemistry, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Fourth e-Science All Hands Meeting nd September 2005 Nottingham

2 Content What do the e-scientists do? A Case study: The Reaction Kinetics research community Examples of current architectures for VREs Web-based, Grid-based Inclusion of P2P - The Collaborative e-Science Architecture Testing the architecture Conclusion and future work

3 REACTIONS MOLES KJOULES/MOLE H2+O => OH+H 5.120E OH+H => H2+O 3.534E H2+OH => H2O+H 1.020E H2O+H => H2+OH 4.520E O2+H+M => HO2+M 2.100E N2/0.67/ O2/0.4/ H2O/0./ AR/0.28/ HO2+M => O2+H+M 1.159E N2/0.67/ O2/0.4/ H2O/0./ AR/0.28/ O2+H+H2O => HO2+H2O 6.890E HO2+H2O => O2+H+H2O 3.801E O2+H => OH+O 9.756E OH+O => O2+H 1.450E H2O2+H => HO2+H E HO2+H2 => H2O2+H 1.507E H2O2+H => OH+H2O 1.020E OH+H2O => H2O2+H 6.724E H2O2+O => OH+HO E OH+HO2 => H2O2+O 4.073E H2O2+OH => H2O+HO E H2O+HO2 => H2O2+OH 4.744E H2O2(+M) => 2OH(+M) 3.000E N2/0.4/ O2/0.4/ H2O/6.5/ AR/0.35/ LOW / 3.000E / TROE / / 2OH(+M) => H2O2(+M) 7.230E N2/0.4/ O2/0.4/ H2O/6.5/ AR/0.35/ LOW / 5.530E / TROE / / 2H+M => H2+M 1.870E N2/0.4/ O2/0.4/ H2O/6.5/ H2/0./ AR/0.35/... END Case Study: The Reaction Kinetics Research Community Chemical Reaction Mechanisms Laboratory Experiments Modelling Simulations Sensitivity Analysis Applications in Combustion Chemistry Applications in Atmospheric Chemistry Application in Environmental Chemistry

4 Case Study: Challenges The requirements of Reaction Kinetics Research Community are related to two challenging issues in e-Science community: How to provide the scientists with an integrated collaborative research environment for user collaborations How to provide the scientists easy access to computationally intensive resources from a desktop computer

5 Examples of Current Architectures: Web-Based VKP Server(1) VKP Community BADC Server(2) BADC Community (1) The Virtual Knowledge Park, (2) British Atmospheric Data Centre, ?

6 Examples of Current Architectures: Grid-based (1) The White Rose Grid, (2) Collaboratory for Multi-Scale Chemical Science, Sheffield Leeds York White Rose Grid(1) WRG Portal CMCS Portal(2) CMCS Community Grid Fabric

7 Examples of Current Architectures: Summary Grid architecture is good for dealing with the need for computational resources and data storage Collaborations amongst users use web portal (basically a centralised web-based architecture). This approach has a few limitations: Direct collaborations within such a community are limited (it is possible to use , but this method is not suitable for sharing large data files) Cross-community collaborations are limited It is hard to form ad hoc working groups, which consist of members from different communities

8 Potential of P2P Computing Direct communication of peer users Bring end users closer to their communities and shared resources Sense of privacy and ownership over shared resources Ad hoc group can be formed easily to support collaborative work A P2P network Isolated peers A peer can easily connect to other peers in the network

9 The Collaborative e-Science Architecture (CeSA) An collaborative architecture for an integrated collaborative research environment to better support user collaborations in distributed communities to provide scientists with easy access to computation intensive resources and storage

10 The CeSA: An Example (1) The White Rose Grid, (2) Collaboratory for Multi-Scale Chemical Science, Sheffield Leeds York White Rose Grid(1) WRG Portal CMCS Portal(2) CMCS Community Grid Fabric A working group

11 Service Oriented Architecture The Collaborative e-Science Architecture (CeSA) P2P Environment Grid Resource Providers Collaborative Research Environment Service s

12 The CeSA: P2P Environment An integrated environment for user lightweight collaborations: chatting, file sharing, discovery of shared resources, etc Tools for users to form virtual working groups User interfaces for executing services from grids Publication and discovery of services from the grids

13 The CeSA: Components of P2P Application Services Service Client Service Publication & Discovery Agent Peer Core Components Community Services User Interface Other P2P applications

14 The CeSA: Grids Grids are providers of computation and data intensive resources (e.g. large datasets) These resources and data are provided to P2P environment in form of High Level Services Management of user community in P2P environment is separated from the management within grids

15 The CeSA: High Level Services Can be built by wrapping resources on the grid Can be composite services or workflows available on the grids Conform to a unified service interface High Level Service Container Grid Workflows Grid Services Grid Resources Grid Fabric P2P Environmen t High Level Services Grid Relationships between a High Level Service Container and other grid components

16 Testing the architecture Approach Prototyping: building a prototype system based on the CeSA using real requirements & data from reaction kinetics research community, using JXTA and GT3 Experiment: conducting user evaluation on the prototype system and collecting their feedback

17 Prototype: An Example Screen Shot Browsing service registry from a peer-to-peer application Services for Reaction Kinetics A working group A Peer member

18 User Evaluation: Objectives To evaluate the effect of using P2P collaborative environment provided by the CeSA in a realistic user working environment To assess how users can benefit from the access to remote simulations and analyses provided by grids via Grid Services To capture user general attitudes to the new collaborative research environment

19 User Evaluation: Method & Process Data collection method: Questionnaire Participants were provided with mixture of closed and open questions A collaborative scenario was also provided The experiment process Three scientists involved in the experiment at the same time They used the prototype as guided by the scenario to collaborate with each other Their feedback was recorded in the questionnaire

20 User Evaluation: The Results Generally positive Participants expressed their interests on using the prototype system, here is some feedback: “A fully working system would benefit the atmospheric chemistry group provided it was widely accepted by the whole community” “I think that our group would certainly use such a system if it proved to be the way forward in e-Science (which I feel it is) and the community embraced the use of such a system” However, there were also some worries about security

21 Conclusion & Future Work The positive result has shown the potential of the CeSA for collaborations in a scientific community The CeSA is a suitable architecture for Virtual Research Environments but need to investigate scalability issue of P2P to address security requirements more testings/ evaluations.

22 Questions?