Projet B02 - AAA / SWITCH, e-Infrastructure for e-Science; Swiss Grid Portal

The primary goal of this project is to select, enhance, deploy and test a fully functional Grid portal user interface. It will be fully integrated with the infrastructure provided through the Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid (SMSCG) project. The application driving the project will be the Proteomics Identification Toolbox (swissPIT) of the University of Geneva section of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. The swissPIT end-users require a high-level, easy-to-use interface in order to perform their research in the domain of life sciences.

There already exist several portals for end-user access to Grid resources in many other pro jects. However, most of these portals are specifically customized to the given application at hand and are not easily adaptable to new applications. Very few have integrated workflow ca pabilities, which is the prerequisite for most high-level applications. Most existing portals provide a web version of the command-line tools provided by the Grid middleware. We intend to make use of those existing low-level portal components available in the community and of the JOpera workflow engine, developed and maintained by USI. By building the portal with the strong in volvement of a user community (Life Sciences â Proteomics) we will be able to improve the usability concept of existing portals. The new swissPIT Swiss Grid Portal (an early prototype portal already exists) will be built with reusability in mind, such that the actual Proteomics specific parts are clearly separated and customizable for future applications, not only in Life Sciences but also from other scientific domains. Necessary new functionality like the integration with SWITCHaai will be identified and added by the project.

The existence of such an open portal framework is to the benefit of all of the Swiss Grid user community, who will be given an easy to use, customized access to their complex, computationally intensive applications. It will directly benefit the Grid application providers, who will be able to quickly assemble such a customized end-user portal for their user communities, without the need to deal with the intricacies of Grid user identity management, job management, monitoring as well as user data upload/download handling.

Partners: CSCS, University of Geneva, SIB