Using User Driven Dynamic Grid Services and Temporary Virtual Organisations to integrate new users and old systems in e-science facilities.

Introduction

The BDIFS project has been investigating the issues surrounding integration of legacy systems in Small to Medium Enterprises in North Wales since 2001. The issues addressed by the project are the challenges that SME face in adopting automated e-business that can be linked specifically to the costs and technical challenges of implementing Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) software.

This paper advances this project forward and combines the integration issues that SME’s face with the data and user integration issues e-science facilities face. Using CCLRC e-science facilities as a example the paper addresses the issues of visiting scientist integration on site and how their data sourced from various types of e-science type legacy equipment can be presented to them off site in formats that they desire.

Objectives

Thus the main objectives of the paper are to demonstrate how the BDIFS architecture can be redesigned to support a new type of SMe ( the Small to Medium e-science facility) and its needs.

Technically the objective of the paper demonstrates an extension of the use of BDIFS Dynamic Virtual Organisations (VO’s) to create a method by which temporary local resource access can be given to visitors using their credentials in a single sign on framework suitable for a e-science application. These temporary VO’s will be designed to consist of the specific equipment and resources the visitors need on site. Thus creating a tailored environment for the visitor which can be made user friendly with added services in the VO, and separating the users from other resources on the site.

In addition to the use of VO’s, the development of legacy data translation services in the framework will demonstrate a significant advance on the existing BDIFS infrastructure. Here the users are presented with the ability to design the format in which they wish to receive their experiment data. This is via a translation tool that is enabled by the use of an experimental GUI which is explained in the paper. The GUI presents users with a form where they can map legacy data onto a desired target data format, for example the BDIFS business application this can be used to map legacy purchase order data to an ebxml format purchase order. Once this mapping is complete the saved translation is turned into a BDIFS service and indexed within a BDIFS repository.

Thus when future users come to use BDIFS who may not be the original creators of the translation, the same service can be presented for them for use. Furthermore this approach allows the efforts of the service designers in both communities to build up a knowledge base that can be shared with wider organisations.

Methodology Used

The BDIFS design is based on Grid Service WSRF standards implemented using the Globus Toolkit Version 4. The Virtual Organisations are controlled by a central BDIFS BaseVO using a Dynamic VO manager to create temporary VO instances, populating them with the required services to match the visiting scientists needs. This approach to creating VO’s is used in the existing BDIFS implementation for business and also by the Akogrimo project where VO’s are formed to manage groups of actors.

The translation mapping and service repository is created using standard web technologies largely php, mysql and javascript. These are combined with GT4 to enable the deployment of new translations as services. The current testing of this approach is being conducted in both a business computing environment with links to the University of Wales in Bangor and a e-science facility at CCLRC.

Technology or Business Case Description

This method of service creation is ideal for temporary integration fixes in business such as when a business acquires another company and needs short term data integration between systems. Within e-science the dynamic VO creation has the potential to allow visiting professors to experiment and create various output formats of data from science facilities for analysis offsite.

When combined with dynamic workflow composition the mix of translation services could be presented in complex rule based translation scenarios that are conducted depending on the values presented in the data. A GUI to allow users to dictate rules and create workflows in the same simple manner of the services is in the process of being designed to complement this, and will be presented in the paper.

Thus a dual business case can be seen for the project. The initial one is the original e-business integration case for the SME. Where the project has the aim of creating a e-business integration solution SMEs with little IT knowledge can use and deploy with minimal external help and support. The secondary case associated with e-science is the creation of a temporary set of e-science VO’s for temporary scientist in the same manner as stable National Grid Service type VO’s are established in the science community.

Conclusions and Summary Recommendations

The paper makes the case for a service orientated grid approach to e-science, a case that has to date had few practical examples supporting it. In addition to this the ability of users to create services and for them to be automatically deployed presents the possibility of a new type of temporary application integration phenomenon that could be a significant contribution to both the SME and SMe based communities.