Development of Science Gateways Using QCG — Lessons Learned from the Deployment on Large Scale Distributed and HPC Infrastructures

Today, various Science Gateways created in close collaboration with scientific communities provide access to remote and distributed HPC, Grid and Cloud computing resources and large-scale storage facilities. However, as we have observed there are still many entry barriers for new users and various limitations for active scientists. In this paper we present our latest achievements and software solutions that significantly simplify the use of large scale and distributed computing. We describe several Science Gateways that have been successfully created with the help of our application tools and the QCG (Quality in Cloud and Grid) middleware, in particular Vine Toolkit, QCG-Portal and QCG-Now, and make the use of HPC, Grid and Cloud more straightforward and transparent. Additionally, we share the best practices and lessons learned after creating jointly with user communities many domain-specific Science Gateways, e.g. dedicated for physicists, medical scientists, chemists, engineers and external communities performing multi-scale simulations. As our deployed software solutions have reached recently a critical mass of active users in the PLGrid e-infrastructure in Poland, we also discuss in this paper how changing technologies, visual design and user experience could impact the way we should re-design Science Getaways or even develop new attractive tools, e.g. desktop or mobile-based applications in the future. Finally, we present information and statistics regarding the behaviour of users to help readers understand how new capabilities and functionalities may influence the growth of user interest in Science Gateways and HPC technologies.     

基于 REST 风格的科学计算环境 Web服务 API

基于 Web 页面的计算门户提供了简单易用的用户使用界面,这些门户需要访问异构的计算机群。本文研究和实现基于 REST 风格的科学计算环境 Web 服务 API (SCEAPI-REST),其核心思想是充分利用 Web 服务在复杂系统中的集成优势以及 REST 风格的 API 跨平台和跨编程语言的特性,为开发者提供简单易用的计算机群开发接口,包括用户管理、资源查询、作业管理和文件传输等功能。基于 SCEAPI-REST,开发人员不再需要解决机群访问的繁杂问题,只需要专心构建面向科学计算的终端软件。该 API 已经应用到计算化学、材料科学、生物信息等多个领域的专业社区和工具软件。     

Using extended web technologies to develop Bluetooth multi-platform mobile applications for interact with smart things

Nowadays the classic web paradigms are being subjected to changes; every day millions of users around the world use their Smartphones to access web applications from anywhere. The World Wide Web it is one of the biggest repositories of information in the world, and that information is stored in internet servers and repositories, but today in the real world there are many other information sources such as electronic devices with communication capabilities: smart appliances and sensor networks. The Smartphones are equipped with communication hardware elements like the Bluetooth module, which allows the Smartphone to exchange information with nearby electronic devices. Every day more and more mobile applications are being developed for native platforms that use Bluetooth’s communication module to send and receive information from different sources. Native mobile applications use the specific platform’s APIs to manage the Bluetooth communication actions (send and receive information, search for devices, etc.), however, web applications do not have technical capabilities to manage the Smartphone’s Bluetooth communication module and thereof cannot use that kind of information. The main objective of this research work is to design a novel framework that allows classic web applications to use information from nearby electronic devices. The proposed framework must be easy to use and able to be integrated with common web technologies. Developers can use this framework to include new information sources and data exchange procedures in an easy way. The new type of information can be merged with the web to develop or improve algorithms and web applications.     

Mining Integration Patterns of Programmable Ecosystem with Social Tags

During recent years, APIs provided by Web sites and online social networks have become important forms for Web-based applications due to their popularity, availability, programmability and composability. While many efforts have been made to investigate, analyze, and navigate the programmable ecosystem consisting of APIs and Mashups (i.e., composite services derived from APIs), a complete analysis of the integration patterns of APIs/Mashups is still lacking. To address such an issue, we introduce various network models by considering social tags as crucial components in exploiting the integration or usage patterns for both API and Mashup applications. With network analysis, we present a comprehensive analysis of the programmable ecosystem in which all the Web APIs and Mashups can be covered. In particular, we explore Mashups in the programmable ecosystem exhibiting hybrid integration patterns, where they not only compose APIs but also largely integrate other real-life applications. Our experiments and analysis highlight a more comprehensive analysis of the programmable ecosystem than do the current state-of-the-art studies.     

A context awareness framework for cross-platform distributed applications

With the introduction of interconnected cross-platform middleware, a new area of opportunities for ubiquitous/pervasive computing has emerged. Context aware applications can be enhanced to practically and realistically incorporate multiple facets of human–machine interactions in everyday life that are not limited to a device-centered model for deducing context. In this paper, we propose that they can rather extend this model to a human-centered, device and platform independent model, based on a personal distributed application and data cloud ecosystem. For this to be achieved, webinos, a set of web runtime extensions that enable web applications and services to be used and shared consistently and securely over a broad spectrum of converged and connected devices, is used to provide this ecosystem. The webinos Context Awareness Framework described here is accessible to each webinos-enabled application. After strict policy enforcement, it can collect contextual information, either via an automatic mechanism that intercepts native calls made by webinos applications through the various webinos APIs, via an automatic polling mechanism to these APIs, or via custom, application-specific context schema extensions. It can then distribute the contextual information from its own personal cloud storage mechanism, in the form of simple, manageable and intuitive Context Objects, to and from all webinos-enabled devices owned by the same user, or even other, authorized users.     

Internet Based Reconfigurable Architecture for CAPP Development and Customization

To realize the abilities of reconfiguration, flexibility and integration with other enterprise applications, Intemet/Intranet based CAPP architecture is presented in this paper, The architecture should be implemented for certain special domain to form the domain process planning framework and the domain framework could be developed to practical enterprise CAPP application. With regard to the characteristic of product family process planning in certain specialty domain, the CAPP applications are customized based on the framework derived from the architecture. The architecture has the colranon functions and services process planning. The architecture generalizes traditional functions and services into components, such as the guidance of process indexing and process variation, resource management and so on. These functions are supplied in the form of web services. In .the mean time, the data interfaces needed for integration are defined and implemented with XML technology, The customization of CAPP framework to eleetromotor product family based on the architecture, and CAPP application system for specifically electromotor enterprise based on the framework is illustrated,     

XML seen as integral to application integration

Many companies have a wealth of information in their databases and applications, and want to leverage these assets. They are beginning to see that XML could help them do this by providing a standard data format for cross-platform information exchange. XML thus offers a powerful new way to integrate new and existing applications within companies. Today much of that linking must be done using enterprise application integration software, which is often complex and quite costly. Developers may have to translate legacy APIs to new component APIs or change flow data and workflow processes are structured to permit data exchange between incompatible applications. Analysts and some early adopters say XML will help simplify this complex, labor-intensive process because it lets developers precisely identify pieces of data on the basis of content     

Defining a call control interface for browser-based integrations using representational state transfer

While integrating telephony call control signaling into a desktop application is not a new concept, the emergence of web browser-based applications drives the need for feature parity between desktop and browser-based telephony call control applications. Desktop call control applications typically have the advantage of being able to use local protocol stacks or API libraries. A browser-based application does not have the same capabilities by default, especially when running on a constrained device. Traditional telephony call control APIs and architectures do not currently lend themselves for use with web browser-based applications without requiring some form of download which is not desirable. Is it possible to design a call control interface that can be consumed in browser-based applications natively without requiring additional downloads? Representational State Transfer (REST) is a resource oriented architectural style which, when used with HTTP as a uniform interface offers the possibility to use an existing defined set of interfaces to manipulate state transitions for resources. We propose that the REST architectural style can be used with an identified interface design methodology to define an interface for telephony call control capable of being consumed by browser-based applications. Furthermore by utilizing existing industry standards as an example, we suggest that existing standards can be extended to support browser-based integrations using REST.     

主动节点操作系统的API研究

提出了一套不依赖于特定NodeOS的统一API,包括主动代码管理、AA和EE运行管理、通信管理、带内安全策略管理及主动节点管理5大部分,然后基于NodeOS 3层结构模型讨论了接口的主要实现机制。该套接口具有通用、支持多个EE以及便于第三方EE开发的特点。     

一种支持自适应程序设计的移动机器人中间件

机器人控制中间件是软件中间件设计研究领域的一个热点.为了开发一种支持自适应程序设计的移动机器人中间件平台,首先提出这种中间件平台需要满足的设计要求:跨底层硬件平台、保证服务质量以及具备一定的自适应能力.从Java虚拟机的移植、服务质量表现形式的选择、自适应机制及SCC(Sensor/Compute/Control)设计结构的应用4个方面来阐述此中间件平台的设计思路和开发过程.最后,通过真实实验的数据对比,说明此中间件可为移动机器人程序的有效开发提供服务质量保证.     

Web Services as Building Blocks for Science Gateways in Astrophysics

An efficient exploitation of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) is needed to deal with the data deluge that the scientific community is facing, in particular the Astrophysics one due to the emerging Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope that will reach data rates in the exascale domain. Hence, Science Gateways are being enriched with advanced tools that not only enable the scientists to build their experiments but also to optimize their adaptation to different infrastructures. In this work we present a method, called “two-level workflow system”, to build this kind of tools and we apply it to a set of analysis tasks of interest for some use applications to the SKA. This method uses the Software-as-a-Service model to keep the scientists insulated from technical complexity of DCIs, and the COMPSs programming model to achieve an efficient use of the computing resources.     

一种基于XML的Web数据集成方案

介绍了Web环境下异构数据集成技术产生的背景和研究目的以及相关的概念、技术和方法,针对XML作为合适的数据交换格式的特点介绍了基于XML的信息集成的关键因素,提出了一种基于XML的Web数据集成操作模型,并讨论了该模型在Web数据集成时数据交换和共享过程,给出了集成构架的结构及组成。     

一种面向门户中间件的Web应用深度集成模型

提出了一种面向门户中间件Web应用的深度集成模型.该模型可以对已有Web应用的逻辑层和表示层同时加以整合,从而大大提高了已有系统的重用性,简化了Portlet开发.该模型已经在实际项目中得到了验证.     

An interoperable spatiotemporal weather radar data dissemination system

This paper investigates an interoperable framework to disseminate Earth Science data to different application domains. The proposed framework can manage different Earth science data products and raster snapshots over time through the use of relevant metadata information. The framework generates images to be accessed by GIS software for various Earth science and web‐based applications. The access is enabled through the compliance with OpenGeospatial Consortium's Web Map Service (WMS) for interoperability such that any WMS viewer can access the service. The framework can provide GIS users the capability to incorporate geospatial information from other WMS servers. Using the United States NEXt generation weather RADar (NEXRAD) data, we demonstrate how the proposed framework can facilitate the dissemination of Earth Science data to a broad community in a near real‐time fashion. The proposed framework can be used to manage and disseminate various types of spatiotemporal Earth science data.     

基于Web Service进行信息共享和集成的关键技术

由于Web Service是基于标准协议和规范(包括HTTP、SOAP、XML、WSDL、UDDI等),并且平台独立和语言独立的,因此Web Service已成为基于Internet网进行信息交换、信息共享、信息集成和互操作的主流技术,在电子商务和电子政务中被广泛应用.详细介绍了基于Web Service进行信息共享和集成的关键技术--Web Service异步调用技术和动态调用技术.通过Web Service异步调用技术,实现了Web Service的分布式并行执行,提高了计算的效率.通过Web Service动态调用技术,使整个软件系统具有可扩充性,并且易于维护,能满足Internet环境动态性的要求.     

一种基于DFA的服务行为模型及其应用

本文对Web服务行为描述进行深入分析,在构造web服务自动集成结构基础上,对原有限自动机定义进行语义扩展和候选集扩展,达到准确地描述Web服务间的执行步骤、行为间简单逻辑运算关系和代价选择运算关系目的.完成服务提供商提供服务流与用户期望在该结构下的自动匹配,为web服务自动集成提供了理论依据.     

Semantic integration of audio content providers through the Audio Commons Ontology

A broad variety of audio content is available online through an increasing number of repositories and platforms. Resources such as music tracks, recorded sounds or instrument samples may be accessed by users for tasks ranging from customised music listening and exploration, to music making and sound design using existing sounds and samples. However, each online repository offers its own API and represents information through its own data model, making it difficult for applications to exploit the plurality of online audio and music content on the web. A crucial step toward integrating audio repositories in a flexible manner is a shared basis for modelling the data therein. This paper describes and extends the Audio Commons Ontology, a common data model designed to integrate existing repositories in the audio media domain. The ontology is designed with the involvement of users through surveys and requirements analyses, and evaluated in-use, by demonstrating how it supports the integration of four relevant repositories with heterogeneous APIs and data models. While this work proves the concept in the audio domain, our proposed methodology may transfer across a broad range of media integration tasks.