Application portlets within the PROGRESS HPC Portal Michał Kosiedowski

Agenda Grid portals PROGRESS HPC Portal Specialized application portlets Conclusions

Grid portals: today Target: access to distributed grid services from multiple portals TACC GridPort 3.0 NCSA Alliance Portal PROGRESS HPC Portal

PROGRESS

Grid Service Provider Job Submission Service –computing job building, submitting jobs to the grid for execution and monitoring the execution –grid job descriptions in the XRSL language are transferred to the GRB for the execution of the job –possibility to prepare workflows Application Management Service –manages the PROGRESS application repository –an application descriptor contains a reference to the application ’ s executable and a set of its available, required or optional arguments, required environment variables as well as input and output files –one executable may be referenced by many applications –different application configurations are recognized as independent applications

Data Management System A distributed system enabling the management of grid data files Storing files in distributed storage modules of various types: generic filesystems, archivers, relational databases Uses metadata to describe files Allows access to data banks like a mirror of Sequence Retrieval System Exposes its functionality within the Data Broker Service

PROGRESS HPC Portal

Core portlets “ My computing jobs ” : –creation, configuration and execution of grid jobs on the grid –downloading and visualizing the results –utilizes the functionality of the GSP Job Submission and Application Management services and the DMS Data Broker. “ Applications ” : –management of grid-enabled applications within the GSP application repository –co-operates with the GSP Application Management Service and the DMS Data Broker. “ My data ” : –management of the files stored within the DMS –uploading and downloading files from the DMS –communicates with the DMS Data Broker.

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (1)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (2)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (3)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (4)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (5)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (6)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (7)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (8)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (9)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (10)

“ My computing jobs ” portlet (11) Exposes the whole functionality of the Job Submission Service Enables submission of any job utilizing any available application Great for experienced users allowing them to fulfill their requirements Too complicated for use by non-advanced users Solution: specialized application portlets utilizing the same services as core portlets and familiar with the corresponding grid-enabled application structure

“ Gaussian ” portlet (1)

“ Gaussian ” portlet (2)

“ Gaussian ” portlet (3)

“ Gaussian ” portlet (4)

“ DNA Assembly ” portlet (1)

“ DNA Assembly ” portlet (2)

“ DNA Assembly ” portlet : Visualization

Application portlets Provide users with interfaces that are easy to use and require no grid knowledge Grid jobs may be configured very quickly with an intuitive wizard Easy and quick access to results: application portlets are familiar with corresponding applications Problem: How to quickly build such specialized portlets?

PROGRESS Portlet Framework The Framework allows preparing a high-level interface to Web Services with special beans to store the data obtained from WS responses and classes used to translate HTTP requests into the invocation of proper WS methods. This allows to quickly build new portlets on top of those classes to utilize the already existing functionality that they provide.

Provider... Provider HTTP Content Generator Request Handler... Web Service Proxy... Web Service Proxy... Web Services Invocation Framework SOAP (to GSP, DMS) Portlets

Communication with Web Services (1) Web Services Invocation Framework is used for communication with Web Services Object executeMethod( String methodName, ArgumentTable methodArguments) AXIS toolkit is used to generate the binding classes for complex class types mapping Each Web Service is described in an XML configuration file

Application Management ApplicationManagementWS.wsdl ApplicationCtrl GSP Application Management Service Job Submission JobSubmission.wsdl JobSubmissionCtrl GSP Job Submission Service Communication with Web Services (2)

Content generation (1) The content is generated based on two HTTP request parameters ( page and action ). 1.page e.g. ApplicationList, JobList 2.action e.g. removeApplication, submitJob Actions are defined in actions.xml, pages in pages.xml (the content of those files is read by appropriate classes, ContentGenerator reads Action and Page objects from those classes). Actions are executed before page content is generated; pages usually contain default actions to generate their content. Actions are usually page independant, they can also replace the default page action An action is associated with one or more RequestHandler methods,or with methods of many RequestHandlers The Java reflection mechanism is used to call RequestHandler methods

Content generation (2) Page content is delivered by RequestHandlers in form of PageBean classes Each page can contain one or more classes implementing the PageBean interface ( PageBean classes know how to deliver their content in form of a DOM) The page generates its content by converting its PageBeans into a DOM and then transforming it using an XSLT template

Page PageBean1 RequestHandler1 RequestHandler2 RequestHandler3 PageBean2 PageBean3 PageBean4 DOM1 DOM2 DOM3 DOM4 DOM Content Generator HTML

Content generation (3) Pages are defined in an XML config file: Application List List of PROGRESS applications application-list.xsl...

Content generation (4) Invocation of many RequestHandlers Edit Application Executable Edit application executable file - choose/change the file. The executable can also be uploaded to SZD. edit-application-executable.xsl

Content generation (5) RequestHandler ”workflow” Job List List of jobs for a given user job-list.xsl <method name="filterJobs" input-name="userJobs" output-name="filteredJobs"/>

Content generation (6) Page error redirection – defined in an error-redirections.xml file:

Framework advantages It’s easy to reuse the portlets in different portal frameworks and on various portals and websites –The top-level Provider class can be easily adjusted to implement any portal framework API –The content generated by a portlet can be easily changed by playing with configurations files The same RequestHandlers can be used by mutliple portlets thus enabling easy creation of new portlets communicating with the same WS services –specialized application portlets, e.g.: “ Gaussian ” portlet, “ DNA Assembly ” portlet

Conclusions Our experience shows it’s important to provide users with interfaces to grid-enabled applications that are easy to use and do not require deep knowledge about the grid and/or the application. It’s now easy to create such interfaces having powerful grid services on hand and tools like PROGRESS Portlet Framework that facilitate building these interfaces.

PROGRESS