ARCHIVED: Completed project: SDCI NMI Improvement: Open Gateway Computing Environments - Tools for cyberinfrastructure-enabled science and education

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Primary UITS contact: Marlon Pierce

Completed: August 31, 2014

Description: Science Gateways and portals are web-based user interface and accessibility tools that provide user-centric views of cyberinfrastructure: they convert computing resources into tools for web-based science and education. Although numerous production gateways have been developed, problems remain. How can operational gateways sustain themselves as underlying resources and middleware change? How can a gateway leverage modern commercial web techniques like gadgets and social networking? How can a gateway wrap complicated science applications as robust services and workflows that really work in day-to-day operation? Can startup gateways reuse proven software from mature gateways and avoid reinvention? The research team addressed these problems through the Open Gateway Computing Environments (OGCE) collaboration, an integrated group of software developers and operational gateway providers. Key partner gateways included GridChem, GISolve/SimpleGrid, the Purdue Scientific Data and CCSM Gateways, UltraScan, and MyOSG.

The goal of investigators was to provide high-quality implementations of software tools for grid- and cloud-based scientific application management, workflow composition and enactment, and social network-capable gadget component management. The assembled team supported the full lifecycle of gateway software, from requirements gathering to operational use. This cycle was directly reflected in the project's structure. Feature requests, enhancements, and changes to the software were managed using the Apache meritocracy model. The team achieved long-term sustainability through participation in the Apache Software Foundation. Software developed by the researchers complied with relevant standards: scientific job management was provided through web services generated by an application factory service, workflows were executed using open standards for enactment engines, and user interface components were compatible with the Open Source specification. Additionally, the team investigated the extension of gadget components to the HUBzero framework.

Outcome: OGCE developed and packaged downloadable software for building science gateways, and produced several screen-capture videos that illustrate how to install and use the software.

Related information:

Apache Airavata

Project team: The OGCE team was a NSF-funded collaboration between Indiana University, San Diego State University, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

Governance: The project was governed by open source software governance (see Apache Corporate Governance).