GridLab Review - WP4 WP4 - Grid Portals GridLab Review Michael Russell Albert Einstein Institute

GridLab Review - WP4 Our Role in GridLab Responsible for the development of the GridLab Portal, the Testbed Administration Portal (WP5 has actually taken on this role), and the Cactus Portal at AEI. We saw that many other Grid projects like our own were (are still) building “stove-pipe” solutions. We wanted to facilitate the exchange of software and expertise. We recognized the need for a framework that was geared towards Grid portal developers, one that was built on standards and solid design practices, but lightweight and easy to use. So we added the development of GridSphere to our list of responsibilities.

GridLab Review - WP4 What is a Portal? “A portal is a web based application that commonly provides personalization, single sign on, content aggregation from different sources and hosts the presentation layer of Information Systems”(JSR 168) Grid Portals build upon the familiar Web portal model, such as Yahoo or Amazon, to deliver the benefits of Grid computing to virtual communities of users, providing a single access point to Grid services and resources.

GridLab Review - WP4 Early Grid Portal Projects Grid-Port: Perl based framework developed by Mary Thomas and Steve Mock at San-Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) Grid Portal Development Toolkit (GPDK): Developed by Jason Novotny at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory (ASC): Developed by Michael Russell at University of Chicago

GridLab Review - WP4 The State of Grid Portals A Portal is only as good as the underlying deployed infrastructure Portlet development often involves debugging underlying middleware Often difficult and hard to maintain glue code must be written connecting the portal to Grid services, due to lack of/evolving standards. Most portals are stovepipe solutions that provide a complete solution with very little customization capabilities. Separation of presentation and login Generally hard coding of underlying Grid infrastructure details and the codebase Lack of real usability has made it difficult to test and evaluate user interfaces. Web application development still remains a tedious task with little in the way of reusable components, forcing developers to constantly “re-invent” the wheel.

GridLab Review - WP4 Web Frameworks Key features that a portal framework should provide are: Support for the separation of users, groups and roles Support for various authorization schemes Core set of useful components for users Support for user customization and configuration The ability to administer the portal at runtime A clear development model to provide new features/enhancements: Clean separation of logic and presentation Support for persistence Value added classes, libraries, utilities Reusable core components

GridLab Review - WP4 Lessons Learned We are combining the lessons we learned (and are still learning) in the development of the Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory, which lead into the GridLab Project, and the Grid Portal Development Toolkit, one of the earliest and most widely used research projects within the Grid portal community. Develop a “white-box” framework (D. Schmidt) Framework users override base classes and “hook” methods Requires users to become familiar with core framework interfaces Core framework interfaces based on community standard API Make use of design patterns (Gang of Four) Patterns provide solutions to commonly recurring software design problems Patterns Provide common language that makes code easier to read and understand Example MVC pattern used to separate logic from presentation

GridLab Review - WP4 Portlets The Portlet Java Specification Request (JSR-168) lays the foundation for a new open-standard for Web portal development frameworks. Portlets define an API for building atomic, composable visual interfaces to Web content or service providers A portlet provides a “mini-window” within a portal page. Multiple portlets can be composed in a portal page. Portlet spec. provides a packaging and deployment model making it easy to share portlets.

GridLab Review - WP4 Layout & Presentation Portlets define how to construct and deliver Web content as modular components within a Web page. Portlets can be “maximized” or “minimized” within a Web page. Portlets support various modes View, Edit, Help, Configure Users can choose to which portlets they want to be “subscribed”. Users can modify their layout including placement of portlets within a tab, tab names, etc.

GridLab Review - WP4 Portlet Implementations Plenty of “portlet based portals” exist today: Jakarta Jetspeed IBM WebSphere Oracle i9AS Portal BEA WebLogic Portal 7.0 (?) GridSphere… Why not Use Jetspeed? Performed an evaluation of Jetspeed 6/02/2002 Code not very stable, too many dependencies that are all changing e.g. Turbine, ECS, etc. Large open-source projects have disadvantage that it can be difficult to provide changes Wanted to build Portlet implementation that could meet the needs of the Grid community

GridLab Review - WP4 GridSphere Feature List Portlet API implementation nearly fully compatible with IBM's WebSphere 4.2. Support for the easy development and integration of "third-party portlets" Higher-level model for building complex portlets using visual beans and the GridSphere User Interface (UI) tag library. Use of CSS and UI tags allows GridSphere to be “themable” Flexible XML based portal presentation description can be easily modified to create customized portal layouts. Built-in support for Role Based Access Control (RBAC) separating users into guests, users, admins and super users. Sophisticated portlet service model that provides functionality that can be reused across multiple portlets.

GridLab Review - WP4 GridSphere Feature List (cont.) Persistence of data provided using Hibernate supports most major databses including MySQL, Postgres, DB2, HsqlDB, etc. Integrated Junit/Cactus unit tests for server side testing of portlet services including the generation of test reports. Documentation uses DocBook for HTML & PDF output of guides and tutorials GridSphere core portlets offer base functionality including login, logout, user and access control management. Full localization support in the Portlet API implementation and GridSphere core portlets support English, German, Czech, Polish, Hungarian and Italian. Open-source and 100% free! :-)

GridLab Review - WP4 Status Report We’ve made great progress in the last 8 months. We’re at GridSphere 1.2 already and are preparing for 2.0 Portlet JSR compliant release middle of this year. Many partners in Europe, the U.S. and in Asia are using GridSphere to support their Grid portal development. And we’re using GridSphere too!

GridLab Review - WP4 Deliverables - Delivered D4.1 Cactus Portal Prototype D4.2 Requirements Analysis D4.3 Administration Portal (Thanks again WP5) D4.4 Finalized Portal Design Document D4.5 Prototype of portlet framework D4.6 Migration of ASC Portal to new framework D4.7 Portlet Developers guide

GridLab Review - WP4 Recent Highlights Co-chaired Portals & Portlets 2003 with the U.K. E- Science Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland in July Over 50 participants. Released GridSphere 1.0 in September Several publications about GridSphere, including an article written by Jason Novotny for IBM DeveloperWorks! Successful demos in conferences around the world, including GlobusWorld in San Francisco this year.

GridLab Review - WP4 Preparing for a demo at GGF right here in Berlin! Migrating a test application that was put together by our partners at AEI to help us build solutions tailored to their needs. Yet the lessons learned here apply to a large class of applications! Our Work About to be Demoed!

GridLab Review - WP4 Robert Engel Has Signed Onto GridLab!

GridLab Review - WP4 Testing Applications on the GridLab TestBed

GridLab Review - WP4 The GridLab Testbed… A Work In Progress

GridLab Review - WP4 Building Value Added Services

GridLab Review - WP4 What’s Next? Next release of GridSphere… Preparing for production… The Cactus portal… More framework development… More publications, dissemination… Looking for funding after GridLab

GridLab Review - WP4 GridSphere 2.0 (June 2004) GridSphere 2.0 will be Portlet JSR Compliant. We already implement the Portlet API but are waiting for the Portlet TCK to verify compliance with the standard. We are currently migrating our Action Portlet development model to extend from the Portlet JSR work. Our Grid functionality is actually contained in the Grid Portlets web application…. Once we are Portlet JSR compliant, we can release Grid Portlets as its own web application for use in other portlet containers. Oracle has expressed great interest in this, for example. But in GridSphere 2.0, we intend to distribute Grid Portlets with GridSphere to provide a well-integrated, cohesive Grid portal environment.

GridLab Review - WP4 Preparing for Production Now we have a solid framework, with sophisticated user interface development tools and built-in support for Grid portals. While there are many enhancements we have planned for GridSphere, we are turning our attention to the needs of our own users at AEI and members of the GridLab Virtual Organization. GridLab technologies are beginning to mature, and this means we are can build real solutions for the physicists at AEI, the reason why we are here in the first place.

GridLab Review - WP4 Building a Production Grid Constructing a Grid that includes hpc computing resources from LSU-AEI-KISTI. Going to require that users access this Grid with our software, this encourages both better software design and new ways of thinking about how best to exploit this Grid. GridLab software will support this Grid. We want to put our work to use!

GridLab Review - WP4 Key Cactus Portal Features Support for job submission and tracking. Data management tools. Higher-level visualization services. Automated software deployment. Notification services (e.g. AIM, , SMS). SSH access to resources from portal. Improved credential management.

Framework Development Enhance/Add new useful tags/beans for the creation of more complex web interfaces Further improve upon the Action portlet model to be completely event driven. Further refine and enhance the collection of core/grid portlets…. Java GAT will be based in large part on the work we’ve done in GridSphere and on Triana. We will be working with Thilo’s group to refactor GridSphere so that it uses Java GAT and develop tools for advertising Java GAT tasks as units within Triana, made accessible via a single portal instance.

GridLab Review - WP4 Long Term Goals Establishing contacts with industry, including IBM, Intel and Oracle. Seeking interest from industry in the E.U. Establishing strong ties with MPG and other institutes around the E.U. Positioning ourselves as leaders in Grid portal research forums and publications. Developing practical solutions for scientific computing. Branching out to other application areas. Funding more R&D in portal frameworks.

GridLab Review - WP4 Conclusion We believe GridSphere has an excellent future. There are many enhancements we have planned for the future, but we are able to use it for our own needs now. GridLab technologies are reaching the point where we can now consider building production solutions. We’re looking for more collaborations, to get developers to work with us to develop and deploy portals. We’re looking to fund new R&D for next year and beyond.

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