[CCGT] Science Gateways workshop background

Sun Apr 10 22:50:08 CDT 2005

Hi-

The purpose of the workshop is to bring together folks who are trying 
to bring Grid capabilities to a particular science community 
(atmospheric scientists, chemists, bioinformatics folks, etc.), and 
who are looking to use web services and/or web portals to do so.  I 
am seeing these communities moving out ahead of GGF or the "grid" 
experts or "portal" experts.  This is creating a danger that those of 
us running Grids or Grid resources will have a chaotic situation 
where our key commmunities will each want to set up an ad-hoc 
interaction mode with us to serve their communities.  One will want 
to use group accounts and another will want to install a custom 
daemon on our machines.  Another will want to use web services and 
another will want .NET.

The draft I circulated was a first cut at understanding what 10 
communities are trying to build, and all ten want to access Grid 
resources in TeraGrid.  Some are also building their own Grids, and 
all would like to also access Grid resources in the UK or Japan.

The idea of this workshop is to bring these consumers together with 
one another and with producers to see if there are some things we 
might agree on that can be implemented to nudge them toward some 
common solutions.  Now, some TeraGrid folks have made some headway in 
looking at this and I would like to broaden that discussion to others 
who are doing similar things (or should be). To this end I asked Tony 
Hey last week to put me in touch with the right person or persons 
from the UK, and would like similar contacts from Japan (Satoshi 
please suggest) and elsewhere.

I don't see this as a TeraGrid-centric activity - we don't need GGF 
to do that.  We need GGF to help us broaden the effort by helping us 
reach other communities.

So I would expect to do a call for participation not to the producer 
community (GCE-RG, GGF typical producer population, portal experts), 
though it would be good for them to participate, but to the consumer 
community.  I.e. those who don't really care that much about 
standards or web services or grid technology other than that they 
want to use them to serve their customers doing science.

The draft I circulated would be used to structure the workshop, get 
input from more consumer groups, get producer groups to talk about 
how they are addressing these issues, and then update the document as 
a GGF informational document.

CeC

At 2:21 AM +0900 4/10/05, Satoshi Matsuoka wrote:
>Charlie, Dennis,
>
>I agree on its viability, but still Malcolm's concern that it be a
>TeraGrid-only centric event will have to be considered. Here is a 
>(form) letter,
>and with proper fulfillment of the workshop template and widespread
>solicitation to key portal groups in EU as well as AP, hopefully the
>concern will be addressed.
>
>(form letter is attached below)
>							Satoshi
>
>----
>
>On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:52:37 -0500
>Charlie Catlett <catlett at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>
>catlett> Friends-
>catlett> Since the proposal I sent regarding this workshop mentioned a group
>catlett> in TeraGrid that was aiming to have a document drafted in March I
>catlett> wanted to send it to you.  It's very preliminary, but it shows that
>catlett> the group is serious and already getting work done.   I expect an
>catlett> iteration on this document within a few weeks since it was discussed
>catlett> in great detail during several sessions of the TeraGrid all-hands
>catlett> meeting earlier this week.  I think this workshop will be very
>catlett> important to the community.  My hope is that it will bring in some of
>catlett> the less-involved sectors of the community including people who are:
>catlett>
>catlett> - building portals for scientific communities
>catlett> - implementing web services on resources in operational grids
>catlett> - developing operational policies and mechanisms for varying degrees
>catlett> of authorization (from full access shell accounts to restricted
>catlett> service invocations) based on varying degrees of authentication (from
>catlett> highly trusted authentication to anonymous access)
>catlett> - trying to make multiple grids work together, etc.
>catlett>
>catlett> CeC
>
>-----
>
>Charlie, Dennis,
>
>Thanks for yoru workshop proposal for the workshop proposal
>"Science Gateways Portals Workshop".
>
>I am sending this email as the current GROC co-chair and also on behalf
>of the newly proposed community council.
>
>As a part of transitional activity of GGF governance to strengthen the
>community activities, the GFSG and the proposed community council
>therein will be taking active responsibility in workshop oversight. In
>the light of this we have decided to provide active dialogs to the
>workshop organizers to help strengthen the organizational process as
>well as its exterior outreach.
>
>Please re-distribute this email to other organizers as well as anybody
>else involved in your workshop organization.
>
>Since time is short till GGF14, I am accelerating the process by sending
>you comment(s) already made. As you see, although you have solid
>backings, and the workshop is accepted in principle, nevertheless as you
>see the comments below indicate that there is room for improvement in
>the proposal. I hope you could make the initial revisions by reflect the
>comments as you see fit, and send to the (proposed) community council
>the revised version in about a week's time (around April 15th). In the
>meantime as additional comments come along, which will be forwarded to
>you if deemed helpful in the improvement, and if you make improvements
>as well, please let us know where you would like to do so.
>
>Also please note that the primary intention for this is that we will
>want to allow some of the workshop to be a
>academically viable and recognizable activity from not only within the
>Grid community but from other CS communities. Thus, we would like
>to push on external communication of the workshop, both in terms of
>the content as well as the viability of its organizational manners. It
>is NOT intended to increase bureacratic stronghold of GFSG and the
>community council therein over the research groups.
>
>To quote one community council member: "I am passionate about the high
>value of good workshops: they stimulate, they inform, they build
>communities, they cross-fertilise and they recognise the need for new
>lines of work.  Without workshops I think GGF would drift towards narrow
>technical nit-picking standards. The value of workshops is much
>diminished if the only effects are on those at the workshop.  Hence the
>demand for publication and publicity."
>
>I hope the new (proposed) community council can fruitfully work with the
>workshop organizers to fulfill such desires, to have you host a high-quality
>and a productive workshop. Looking forward to the
>revised proposal as well as the workshop itself. Thanks.
>
>					Best Regards,
>					Satoshi Matsuoka
>
>
>Comment 1:
>===
>The Science Portals workshop looks a good topic, and we can trust Dennis
>and Charlie will run an excellent workshop.  However, we need to take
>care that it doesn't become TeraGrid centred or US centred.  We should
>see others, from Asian grids and European grids engaged in planning /
>presenting IMHO.  I can find some, but the recent week on portals at eSI
>led by Jason Navotny has a good list of names
>(http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/esi/contribution.cfm?Title=549),
>particularly UK ones.
>
>I would also suggest Roberto Barbera from Catania, bringing experience
>on EGEE's use of the GENIUS portal Roberto Barbera
><roberto.barbera at ct.infn.it> https://genius.ct.infn.it/.  We have used
>it extensively for traiining and (with GILDA) for new user community
>induction.
>
>What is the planned model of communication?  What should it not clash
>with? ...
>
>I vote for accept, but push on broadening, getting questions answered
>and publication plan.
>===
>
>Comment 2 (general):
>===
>I think we might encourage more substantial publication such as journal
>special issues so as to give greater credit to (academic) participants
>However in general I think we should let each workshop make its choice as
>"external outreach, publication and publicity" which should exist in
>some fashion
>
>===
>
>Comment 3: (Satoshi)
>===
>There are several groups in AP working on "Science Gateway" Portals,
>including those in Japan and Korea, and those should be contacted.
>For example, AIST-GTRC has a PSE Builder effort, and NAREGI's WP3/6 are
>working on high-level portals interface. Korea's K* Grid has several
>efforts in those regard.
>
>Perhaps the best method is to do a call-out throught pragma, with help
>from Peter Artzburger @ San Diego. By all means it is important to make
>the intentions clear so that not all the Grid portals on earth will try
>to participate and ask for a time slot.
>
>---------