AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Virtual Research in the UK: Advanced Portal Services Mark Baker and Hong Ong Distributed Systems Group University of Portsmouth Rob Allan and Xiao-Dong Wang Daresbury Laboratory

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Contents Motivation. Web/Grid Portals: –Portal standards and technologies, Application Portals: –Liquid Crystal Grid (LCG) Portal, –Developing/Deploying LCG portlets. Comments on our experiences.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Motivation The OGSA Testbed: –An e-Science programme funded project to investigate the transition from GT2 to OGSA (GT3) for the UK community, –To explore issues in deploying existing Grid applications to OGSA compliant Grid services, –Members include Portsmouth, Daresbury, Reading, Manchester, and Westminster. –URL Among several projects undertaken, Portsmouth and Daresbury are also involved in investigating Web/Grid Portal development using the state-of- the-art Portal technologies.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Web/Grid Portals A Web portal is a web-based application that acts as a gateway between users and a range of services. Single point of access: –Integration with other applications to allow access to multiple systems with a single sign-on. Content aggregation: –Integrate content and information from a variety of sources within a single web page. Information delivery: –Help the user avoid being overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information and data. User-oriented view: –Enable users to customize the portal by selecting, organizing, and viewing only the information they find useful.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Portal Example Portal controls navigation and layout Portal manages web components (Portlets) and invokes them when output is needed. Single sign-on to secure/ personalised area User Customisation

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Web/Grid Portlets A portlet is a “mini- window” within a Web page that provides a specific service. Portlets generate page fragments, which can be assembled by portals into complete pages. Portlets from different sources can be integrated into a portal framework. Portlets are managed by a portlet container. Portal PagePortlet Window Portlet Fragment Decorations and Controls

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Portal/Portlet Issues Many Web portals: –Each with their own API, –Each has their own definition of what web components (portlets) are, –Each portlet is written in different language, e.g, Perl/Java/PHP scripts or Java applets. Creates compatibility problems for: –Application Providers, –Portal Consumers, –Portal Server. Web application development remains a tedious task –Lack of reusable components, –Developers constantly have to “re-invent” the wheel.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Portal/Portlet Standards Portal/Portlet standard has evolved to address the compatibility issues. JSR-168: –Similar to Servlet API for providing reusable web applications. JSR-127: –Specifies an event-based user interface for web presentation development. Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP): –Specifies how web services can be consumed by standards compliant portals. Aside, JSR-168 and JSR-127 are endorsed by vendors including BEA, Sun, IBM, Oracle, and Plumtree, while WSRP is endorsed by OASIS.

Portal/Portlet Implementations Current vendors: –IBM WebSphere, –Oracle Portal, –Sun Application Server. Open source projects: –Jakarta Pluto (Jetspeed), Jetspeed 2, and wsrp4j, – Exo, Liferay, and Cocoon 2. Academic projects: –GridSphere, Sakai, and uPortal.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 OGSA Testbed: Portal Development HPC Portal(s)Info PortalDSG Portal Sakai/GridSphere  Integrate other Apps,  Data Management,  Visualization.  Resource Info Mgmt.  Everything!!!! Interaction

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 The LCG Portal The architecture is based on the “three- tier” model. Presentation Web Logic Backend

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 LCG Portal: The Early Version

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Single point of Access Multiple Portals Hosting LCG Portal: The Next Generation

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 LCG Portlets Portlets LC Portlets for configuring the various aspect of LC simulation

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 LCG Portal: Internal Architecture Direct socket connection to Grid Service

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 LCG Portal: Software Software Components: –Apache 2.0, mod_jk2, mod_ssl, –Tomcat 5.0+, –Java 1.4.x, –Java CoG v1.1, –MyProxy 1.0, –Globus 3.2, –MPI, –MPI-PovRay, –GridSphere/Sakai.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 LCG Portal: GridSphere Portlets Core Administrative Portlets: –User Manager, –Group Manager, –Portlet Manager. Core User Portlets: –Login/Logout, –Profile Settings, –Layout Configuration, –Subscription Manager, Grid Portlet –Credential Retrieval, –File Browser, –Job Submission, –Resource Browser, –Resource Registry.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Comments on Some Experiences One interface to control distributed resources: –Workflow that cross multiple machines or organizations. Hiding Complexity of the Web/Grid: –Manage complexity on one machine instead of many, –Uniform user environment. Deployment Issues: –Users hate to install/configure anything! –Grid client software management remains challenging.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Comments on Some Experiences User-oriented view issues: –Do they like it? Do we like it? Programming issues: –The focus of this project is to determine whether portlet technology is practical for production deployment! Portlet development issues: –What is the trade off between a portlet orchestrating a lot of web services as compared to simply using WSRP? –Is it a good idea to write code in WSRP, JSR-168, JSR-127, or combination? –In the real world, a portal will be built from components from many sources, so are we back to square one again? Grid Issues: –Infrastructure is a moving target.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Comments on Some Experiences Firewall Issues: –Ports need to be opened for some services to communicate with each other, –Ports management remains challenging. Integration Issues: –If the WSRP to JSR-168 API works out well, each portal should both be a WSRP producer and consumer, –This implies a significant opportunity for creating federated portals, –However, there is much work to do in this area to fully realize this potential at the moment.

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Concluding Remarks Portlet standards provide a uniform way to develop a user Web portal. More portlets (Grid/Web) need to be made available. Applications presented as WS/Portlet has many benefits. Installation and deployment still remain challenging. Integration of portals/portlets still remain problematic. What next: –Friday - 11: :15 Session 6.2: Portals and Problem- Solving Environments II

AHM, Aug-30-Sept-2, 2004 Questions?