1. A new framework to build Science Gateways based on EnginFrame and Liferay
Riccardo Rotondo
INFN Catania – Italy
The Second International Conference of Parallel, Distributed, Grid and Cloud Computing for Engineering
12-15 April 2011
Ajaccio – Corsica - France

2. Outline Grid access technologies Science Gateway
The e-Collaboration environment
The old paradigm
Decomposing the architecture
The new “brick” approach
Use Cases:
The DECIDE Application Portal
The INDICATE e-Culture Science Gateway
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

3. Grid Interface Evolution
The way users access Grid resources has continuously evolved towards simplicity and transparency:
Command Line
Globus and gLite CLI
Used by the enthusiastic and early adopter scientists
GUI applications
gEclipse, Grid2Win
Good to expand the communities but difficult to maintain
Web Interface
GENIUS, P-GRADE
Easier for new users but monolithic
Science Gateways
CLI
gEclipse
Grid2Win
GENIUS
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

4. Science Gateway
A framework of tools that allows scientists to run applications with little concern for where the computation actually takes place. This is similar to cloud computing in which applications run as Web services on remote resources in a manner that is not visible to the end user. However, a science gateway is usually more than a collection of applications. Gateways often let users store, manage, catalogue, and share large data collections or rapidly evolving novel applications they cannot find anywhere else. Training and education are also a significant part of some Science Gateways
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

5. Liferay (www.liferay.com)
Highly-configurable, scalable, open source portal framework;
Compatible with JSR 168/286 standards and based on modern web technologies;
Liferay services planned to be used:
Portal;
CMS & WCM;
Collaboration and “social” software
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

6. Grid Access – Portlets as bricks
Portlets can interact with the Grid e-Infrastructure
Different approaches are available:
Execute the Command Line behind the portal;
Using API where available:
Must be in Java or other languages supported by Liferay;
Call REST services from Javascript code in the browser;
Additional layers between Liferay and the Grid can be necessary for some services;
Each portlet can follow its own communication method.
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

7. First step… … towards the e-collaboration environment
Genius and EnginFrame worked together on an gLite User Iterface to offer grid services.
Front-end and back-end tightly coupled.
Services customized for every single case and not designed for general use.
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

8. Decomposing the architecture
2. Verify ACL
4. Grid Credential
Exchange
1. Log In
6. Results
3. Grid Services Request
5. Grid Services
Saga and Jsaga will let the support of more than one middleware.
gLibrary is tool developed by INFN to easily create, organize, access digital assets on gLite based infrastrucutres.
Clouds underline as the security and the implementations of the services have been decoupled from the front-end represented by the liferay portal.
7. Download data
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

9. The DECIDE Project Objectives (www.eu-decide.eu)
Provide the Neuroscientific and Medical community with a dedicated production quality e-Infrastructure;
Deploy a secure and user-friendly service for the early diagnosis and research on Alzheimer Disease and forms of dementia.
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

10. The DECIDE Science Gateway
Riccardo Rotondo
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

11. The INDICATE Project (www.indicate-project.eu)
Enable the Digital Cultural Heritage Community to access to two different e-Infrastructure repositories:
the archive of Architectural and Archaeological Heritage present in Mediterranean Area;
the Federico De Roberto literary works.
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

12. The INDICATE e-Culture Science Gateway (1/3)
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

13. The INDICATE e-Culture Science Gateway (2/3)
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

14. The INDICATE e-Culture Science Gateway (3/3)
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

15. Conclusions and outlook
Using different frameworks it is possible to build a Science Gateway able to interact with Grid Services;
Liferay is the most used framework and offers an easy, customizable and user friendly interface;
Thanks to robot certificates and X.509 standard the level of security is kept high and the resources safe;
The new “bricks” developed are being used in two projects belonging from two distinct scientific domains.
Future Work:
While the role of Liferay as “front-end” is clear, the interactions of the tools behind are still under development;
Test the new Science Gateway in a production environment:
The goal of DECIDE is to provide a production service.
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011

16. Acknowledgments Roberto Barbera1,2 (roberto.barbera@ct.infn.it)
Giuseppe La Rocca2
Marco Fargetta3
Antonio Calanducci3
Alberto Falzone4
Paolo Maggi4
Nicola Venuti4
1. Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania - Italy
2. Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Division of Catania – Italy
3. Consorzio COMETA Catania – Italy
4. NICE srl - Italy
Riccardo Rotondo
Pareng '11 - Ajaccio, France - April 14, 2011