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The Sakai VRE Demonstrator

Rob Crouchley, Adrian Fish and Miguel GonzalezE-Science Centre, and Collaboratory for Quantitative e-

Social Science,University of Lancaster

Rob Allan, Dharmesh Chohan and Xiaobo YangE-Science Centre, CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory

Mark Baker and Hong OngDistributed Computing Group, University of Portsmouth

Matthew Dovey and Francisco PintoResearch Technology Services, University of Oxford

VRE

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EOptions

• Provide heavyweight functionality (Globus?), but only on Grid-enabled hosts;

• Implied need for client-server software architecture, e.g.:– Web-based portal with familiar browser– Client programming library, API in C, C++ Java,

Perl, Python, R etc. – Ability to link to existing applications/ GUIs– Command-based shell interface– Drag and Drop interface (a la Mac)

• Need a published set of services on Grid hosts – OGSA model, registry, semantics;

• Need easy development and deployment framework for applications and client tools, e.g. using Web services - encourage community contribution via an open process.

Our choice!

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EHuman Factors

• Growing recognition of the need to design a behaviourally appropriate interface to the Grid;

• Rick Stevens’ Access Grid and work on human factors issues;

• Lot of industrial knowledge here, ergonomics etc. needs to be built on;

• Usability Task Force will take a lead;• Job of scientists already hard – need tools that do not

make it harder!

See also Usability Workshop and work of Usability Task Force

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ESome basic VRE Functions

VRE must take care of many things behind the scenes:

• Authentication and authorisation (Shibboleth and Permis in line with JISC proposals…);

• Shared development of content by staff using content management and editing tools:– Access to middleware resources and

documentation,– Access to training materials and resources,– Access to support, consultancy and other services

• Access to Grid Services - user access via pre-defined tools and applications to the UK e-Science Grid;

• Data access – e.g. using Storage Resource Broker;• Access to broadcasts – e.g. on the Access Grid

network;• Management functions - for experts to maintain the

system and deploy new applications.

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E

Middleware/Software Library

Access GRID

Security Authorisation Authentication

Text Mining/ Data services

UK GRID Services

D

JJISC PortalJISC Portal

Portal Management

Semantic GRID Services

VLE Portal VRE

Portal

Awareness Raising Resources

Workshops

Possible functionality/ content of a VRE

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EThe VRE needs to be more than a Web

page

Why should it be different?

• Like the Web, persistent and pervasive, but:• It provides a managed environment, giving secure

access to autonomous Grid services, providing resources, based on user requirements;

• It uses diagnostic/ background data to orchestrate the material for each individual (via session management/ profiling services);

• It will be specific to the needs of groups of scientists (virtual organisations), providing new routes to e-Science;

• The technology will be easily extendable to include all new tools;

• It could be an early adopter of new WSRF/ GT4 and portlet standards.

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EOutline project description

• The proposal was to extend the Sakai open source and open standards portal framework to host a number of integrated tools and robust distributed services as the principal user interface for a fully-functional VRE.

• To accomplish this, we will seek widespread community input to expose existing tools and services as SOAP based Web services for use within the VRE.

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EWhy Sakai now…?

Data StandardsIMS Global

Technical StandardsOKI, JSR-168

Institutional MobilizationEconomics, control of destiny

Foundation $$ Investments Open SourceApplicationsfor Education

InstitutionalPartnering

Converging trends:

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EOverview

• JISC have a SOA (Framework) approach to VLEs and the IE; • Sakai and JISC have different approaches but similar goals;• JISC also extending the e-Science programme, e.g. VRE

programme;• Sakai/CHEF key in the USA for training and awareness and for

research tools;• Put everything together, delivered through a variety of

mechanisms using OKI OSIDs and other APIs, the Sakai TPP, and integration for Web services.

Sakai v2.0 released 16/5/05

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EBackground to Sakai

Collaborative framework in the USA for higher education institutions to develop and share open source software.

•Principally aimed at educational portal development, course management, workgroup management, etc. Adopted by U. Michigan, Indiana U., MIT, Stanford etc.

•Easily customised for e-Science projects, e.g. NEESGrid•Open Knowledge Initiative OSID (Open Services Interface

Definitions)•Research support collaborative system•Tool portability profile•funding

– $4.4M in institutional staff (27 FTE)– $2.4M Mellon Foundation– Additional investment through partners

Built on Java portlet standard JSR-168 plus CHEF/ uPortal framework

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ESakai Timelines

19981991 - 1997 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

SPARC

Science of Collaboratories

Sakai

Worktools (Notes Based) WTNG

Coursetools (Notes Based) CTNG

CHEF 1 CHEF 2

NMI Grid Portal

NEESGrid

Portal TechnologyJetspeed 2.0uPortal 3.0

Websphere É

Channels, Teamlets

JSR-168 Portlets

CHEF Services

JSR-168 Technology

OKI Services

Legacy

SakaiTeamlet

OtherServices

Sakai GUI

SakaiTeamlet

Sakai GUI

Java Swing

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EVRE Demonstrator Work packages

1. Web Services and VRE Extensions to Sakai Framework

• See next slides

2. Integration of UK VRE Tools into Sakai• Later slides

3. A Robust Sakai Demonstrator and Service– Sakai v2.0 hosted on IBM HS20 Blade Center with

Oracle 9i RAC at Daresbury

4. Community, Documentation, Training and Awareness

– Hosting Sakai worksites for projects: ReDRESS, CQeSS, GROWL VRE, Sakai VRE, NWGrid, etc.

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EWP1a: Identification, or specification, of an XML grammar

for describing collaborative re search (Lancaster)

• This is concerned with the problem of describing a collaborative research session in a standard, easily machine parsable fashion.

• We need to be able to describe the time of the pro posed session.

• We then need to be able to describe its subject matter in as rich a set of terms as possible.

• This contextual description will be utilised in other tools, e.g. for information retrieval. Finally, we need to be able to describe the participants.

• The eduPerson initiative http://www.educause.edu/eduperson/ will be assessed as a suitable source for a descriptive grammar.

Deliverables: • Annotated XML schema suitable for describing a collaborative

research session. • Implementation of XML schema, database and interfaces (e.g.

using OGSA-DAI) to be used in VRE tools as part of the Sakai TPP interface.

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EWP1b: A Service Authentication and Authorisation

System (Oxford). • Access to the VRE will be protected by a resource manager,

which will delegate authentication to the callee’s institution. • The keys exchanged during the Shibboleth authentication

phase will then be used for generation of the appropriate Grid credentials required for use of the Grid tools contained within the VRE.

• Other technology could be harvested from HPCPortal or OGCE which use x.509 extension certificates and a MyProxy certificate repository hosted at the UK Grid Support Centre.

Deliverables: • Shibboleth federation, initially with project partners as

members. • Tool for generation of Grid credentials using Shibboleth trust

fabric. • Integration of PERMIS and management tool for role-based

authorisation policies. • Template for tool development and documentation.

See talk by Francisco Pinto

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EWP1c: A JSF-based Web service interface

generator (Daresbury).

• We wish to provide access to Web services as tools within the Sakai framework,

• Within Sakai, such interfaces are rendered using a pipeline consisting of an abstract XML layout description and a final Java Server Faces user interface.

• This work package will produce code that generates such an interface from the WSDL file of a desired Web service.

• All that will be required is the URL of the service WSDL.

Deliverables: • JSF for generic portlet interacting with a Web services

discovered from a UDDI registry and creating a template input form.

• Integrated delegation of rights based on identity. • Template for tool development and documentation.

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EPortlet Architecture using Web Services

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EWorkflow, Portlets and WSRF work at

Daresbury• Daresbury started working with evaluating different BPEL

engines to have proper understanding of BPEL specification i.e. ActiveBPEL, Oracle BPEL engine initially Collaxa BPEL engine.

• Most of projects in CCLRC are portal based, so we studied the relevance of Portal based workflow monitoring and controlling solution.

• Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) is an emerging specification, with limited support - seems to bridge Portal and Web Services and a lot of work has been done, with demo prototype.

• WSRF is extension of existing Web Services and provides extra layer of functionality without changing the Web Service implementation.

• WSRF extension for Web Service starts from modification of existing WSDL file of specific Web Service.

• WSRF extension of WSDL is not straight forward and needs a lot of thorough understanding of WSDL and WSRF.

• Daresbury has built working prototype for testing Web Services based on WSDL.

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ECurrent WOSE Prototype

Screen

Text Field to enter WSDL location

Drop Down Menu for Services & Operations

Buttons to Analyse and Add WS

JTree for adding WS, with user interaction

Display Message content for WS Operation Call

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EDynamic Swing Form created for testing WS

Prototype can handle very complex and composite data types

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EAdding Different WS and SOAP Messages

Different WS added and populated drop down menu

Contents of SOAP Method Call

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EWOSE Prototype

• Prototype to test WS is modular in nature and is quite stable.

• Different components of WSDL like messages, types, ports, services are implemented in different classes for maximum flexibility.

• Prototype can handle composite and complex data type of significant complexity.

• Prototype is using in-memory representation of WSDL, rather than creating stubs and skeletons.

• Another prototype based on stubs and skeletons is created which uses WSDL2Java class to create stubs and skeletons from WSDL and Ant tool to compile them, but it has not been thoroughly tested.

• Purpose of two prototypes is to compare which technique of calling WS is more efficient. Initial test shows for calling small number of WS’s in memory technique is efficient, but for large workflows with many WS’s creating stubs and skeletons should be preferred.

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EFuture Work

• Prototype is stable but still it needs a lot of improvements.• Improvements in Graphical User Interface for better user

experience.• Adding new features for handling WSDL files, which imports

external WSDL files or XML Schema for data types.• Extending prototype to create WSRF compatible WSDL file

from given WSDL file according to user requirements: Adding appropriate WSRF related namespaces to WSDL Importing appropriate WSRF related XML Schema Adding Resources to WSDL Adding Resource Properties to WSDL Adding support to WS-Addressing Adding Support to WS-Notification

• Making prototype as First Tool to test WSRF compliant WS’s.• Evaluating BPELJ/ WSIF (Web Service Invocation Framework)

for extending BPEL for dynamic WS selection, flow decision and data conversion.

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ELeading to: The Grid of Services

Vision to link educational and research Grids and aggregate content.

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EWP1d: Interface to Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Tools

(Portsmouth).• We want Sakai to join P2P networks as a peer and give

federated access to its chat and resources tools for clients using the JXTA protocol

• Sakai’s chat tool will be exposed using JXTA pipes and will be tested against an open source JXTA instant messaging program from the University of Hamburg called JIM (http://jxtaim.sourceforge.net/project.html ).

• Sakai’s resources tool, a tool which allows users to share documents within the context of a worksite, will be given the ability to aggregate content from Sakai users’ computers.

• It will also allow P2P client software users to aggregate Sakai’s internal store of resources with stores from other authenticated peers.

• The JXTA protocols permit the passing of certificates and credentials in message headers.

• This capability will be exploited to ensure that only genuine members of the worksite’s Peer Group will be permitted to chat and merge resource stores.

Deliverables: • Generic interface for peer-to-peer tools based on Gnutella/

JXTA. Comprehensive interface documentation.

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EEnhancing the CHEF Collaborative

Environment…

• Collaboration with Geoffrey Fox, Indiana

• Link into AGN, Narada and portlets

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EWP2: Integration of UK VRE Tools into Sakai

• Sakai comes with a comprehensive suite of pre-built collaboration tools. These include:

group management, Schedule (calendar), Resources, Discussion and Chat.

• Another set of tools already exists from the NMI OGCE portal: Proxy Manager, GRAM Job Launcher, GridPing, Grid Job Submission, LDAP Browser, GridFTP, GridContext, GPIR, CSF Job, OGRE Jobs, Workflow, Anabas Impromptu, BibTex,Application Manager, Condor Job.

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EWP2: Integration of UK VRE Tools into Sakai

• The Sakai toolset is also being extended by the growing list of members of the SEPP.

• Each new tool to be integrated into the Sakai framework by us will be a deliverable and the work will be undertaken by one of the collaborators with input from the original tool developer.

• Our preferred method of integration is via the service paradigm, contributor’s tools will be exposed using SOAP (WSRP) interfaces, and we will write lightweight Sakai adaptor classes that call these interfaces.

• These tools will be based on existing open-source products and, as such, are not being developed from scratch.

• Currently tools are being developed using Java Specification JSR-168 for portability and will be integrated into Sakai TPP when fully tested.

• Support is offered for other projects such as National Grid Service portal, e-HTPX portal, Integrative Biology VRE.

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EWP2: Integration of UK VRE Tools into Sakai

New tools include:• WP2a -Search Tools: (Oxford) Context-based Information

Retrieval, Collection Cross Search, Goggle Web service interface, Application Discovery, Scientific Data Query, UDDI. tools as appropriate.

• WP2b -Collaboration/ Discussion: (Lancaster) IRC (Internet Relay Chat), Blog, Research Scheduler, Video Conferencing, Distributed Whiteboard, Distributed Display.

• WP2c -Analysis Tools: (Daresbury) Scientific Calculator, Active Spreadsheet, Statistical Computing, Data Management, Simple Visualisation, Grid Information, Network Information, Grid computing.

• Wp2d – Advanced Portal Tools: (Portsmouth) This work package will develop and implement a number of Sakai-based tools that will take advantage of the combined technologies emerging from the Semantic Web and P2P communities.

• WP2e -Others: (Daresbury) Portal Statistics, Personal Information Manager, Shopping Cart, Bugzilla, CVS, Authorisation Policy Management.

• WP2f -Training and Awareness: (Lancaster) Research Assistant and Personal Information Guide (PIG), CopperCore Tool, Tool Templates, Documentation Manager, Helpdesk interface.

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EGrid Portlets

Development work in JSR-168 will be ported to Sakai later