Experiences With gRAVI Brian Tieman Beamline Controls and Data Acquisition Advanced Photon Source

Advanced Photon Source www.aps.anl.gov Techniques: http://beam.aps.anl.gov/pls/apsweb/beamline_display_pkg.technique_dir Science & Research Highlights: http://www.aps.anl.gov/Science/Highlights/

Sources of Software Used in APS Experiments (Left) The sample holder at the 2BM experimental end-station. This is the final portion of the 30 meter beamline used for tomography experiments. Commercial Experimental Device Control Software Data Reduction Software Data Visualization Software Beamline Controls and Data Acquisition Group Experiment Control Scripts Beamline Staff Scientists Analysis Software External Users Open source (Below) 3D rendering from computed micro-tomographic data set of the Space Shuttle External Tank Foam. Lots of different software needed to turn this into this It takes a lot of different applications to go from physical sample to data visualization 0.1 mm 0.1 mm

Overall Experiment Work Flow Most all experiments fall into this simple looking work flow. In reality the number of applications that are required to perform this simple workflow for the diverse techniques employed at the APS is astonishingly large. We need tools to develop tools!

Developer vs Development Tool My first operational service was developed from the standpoint of a typical software developer working in the scientific field. At a later date, I learned about the gRAVI tool and rewrote the service using the tool. Developer Generate Service Research how to write a service Buy books Search internet Develop example code Write lots of code! ~10 files of code ~2000 lines of code Deploy More research Configure deployment descriptors Results Time to Deployment > 1 month Security = none Status notification = none Got the job done and I now have a sketchy but growing understanding of how to develop services If our supported envelop changes, service needs to be redevelop and redeployed gRAVI Generate Service Start up Introduce Complete gRAVI wizard for application Deploy Results Time to Deployment < 2 days Security = PKI based credentials Status notification = several useful options Got the job done with little need to understand how to develop services If our supported envelop changes, we rerun the gRAVI wizard to generate an updated service

Needed Development gRAVI is helpful…but it could be better… Server side code gRAVI is easy to use, but creating lots of gRAVI services from legacy code is repetitive The APS could easily generate 100s of gRAVI based services...is there a way to reduce the repetition? Client side code Managing gRAVI services in a custom client can be tedious More auto-generated code to help build client Code to help manage End Point References Would be great to have integration into existing work flow environments such as Taverna Live client for work flow prototyping Way to save and document working work flows Work flow engine running server side with client interface to initiate work flows