Generating Graphical User Interfaces for Grid Computing Portals

Google Summer of Code 2008 ideas

Primary Mentor: Dr Jano van Hemert, j.vanhemert at ed.ac.uk (jvhemert at gmail.com).
Secondary Mentor: Dr Jos Koetsier, jos at nesc.ac.uk.

Background

The research group at the National e-Science Centre of the University of Edinburgh is part of the School of Informatics, which has the highest rating of computer science research in the UK. We continuously have a set of research students (undergraduate year 4, MSc and PhD) interacting closely with the academic staff. A list of past, current, and available projects is on the research web site. As a multi-disciplinary centre, students will benefit from interaction with many other scientific domains. Also, the centre includes the e-Science Institute, which brings in many international visitors, workshops and conferences, and a training team that can assist with questions about grid computing.

Project Goals

To design and implement pluggable components for use in a graphical user interface that enables domain specialists to use Grid Computing and High-Performance Computing resources as easily as booking a flight or ordering a book on-line.

Project Requirements

This project involves much fiddling with XML. It needs a person that understands Java very well. Basic understanding of XHTML markup required. Experience with JSR 168 portal containers are a benefit.

Project Details

This project will use the Rapid Development Tool for Job Submission Portlets (RAPID) system, which is being developed at the National e- Science Centre. A 'factory' for quickly prototyping, developing and deploying such user interfaces.

Grid computing has become very popular in the last decade with its promise to deliver unprecedented computing power to anyone on the planet, anywhere. However, to make use of any Grid, a number of software components and authentication systems are required. Typically, these components and systems vary from Grid to Grid, and without little exception, they are command-line based.

The command line is fine when working with computer-savvy scientists, such as physicists, engineers, astronomers and computer scientists. However, the majority of scientists will not have the time to invest in learning the command line, let alone the mystic incantations required to submit jobs and move data across Grids and other High Performance Computing facilities.

At the National e-Science Centre, a new tool called RAPID is under development that allows a rapid deployment of portals, i.e., web interfaces, that are specifically tailored to a group of scientists. Such a portal will allow them to perform tasks through filling in several web forms and pressing the 'submit to Grid' button at the end.

The tool binds a user interface (xhtml forms) to an XML definition that specifies how a computer job will run on a Grid, called a Job Submission Description Language (JDSL). Currently, an extension is being developed that allows binding a database to both the xhtml forms and the JSDL. This binding consists of one XML file called RAPID-XML. It specifies the control flow of the user interface and in which way GUI components are connected to the JSDL file. No programming is required in the process.

Using the RAPID tool we can create and deploy portals quickly. However, to make it a really powerful tool, we need access to a set of components to allow a user to prepare their job. These components include a remote database selector, a remote file selector, a destination selector (database or file space), and several visualisation components. This is where you come in!