EGI-InSPIRE:Requirements gathering details

Introduction

The evolution of the European Grid Infrastructure is driven by the users. Therefore capturing and communicating feedback from users to the infrastructure as well as technology operators and providers is a key goal for NA3 and for the project as a whole. The page linked below describes the channels, processes and bodies that the User Community Coordination activity established and runs in order to collect, capture, process, and report requirements and recommendations of users. Input from users are collected by NA3 through various electronic channels and face-to-face communication mechanisms. The User Community Board (UCB), the group of representatives of user communities, then prioritises the collected input with the help of the EGI.eu User Community Support Team (UCST) and the User Services Advisory Group (USAG). The prioritised, weighed requirements prepared by these groups provide direction for the evolution of middleware services as well as the user-oriented technical services provided by EGI. This page also includes links to the requirements and recommendations that have been collected through these processes so far.

Requirement gathering and processing workflow in EGI

• Feedback, requirements and recommendations are collected by the User Community Support Team of EGI.eu from user communities.
• The collected information is normalised by the UCST (i.e. the completeness and correctness of the data is checked; format is changed)
• The data is evaluated by the UCST, and by the User Services Advisory Group.
• The requirements are discussed, prioritised and endorsed by the User Community Board to assure that the user communities interests are correctly represented
• The developers of user services inside EGI-InSPIRE incorporate the endorsed requirements into their development roadmap
• The Technology Coordination Board (TCB) incorporates the endorsed requirements into the UMD (Unified Middleware Distribution) roadmap (Developers outside of EGI-InSPIRE)
• The developers and operators develop test, validate, install new tools on the infrastructure

Requirement documents

These documents are collections of requirements and recommendations provided for EGI by the user communities. The User Community Support Team of EGI.eu processes these documents, captures e-infrastructure requirements from them then merges with inputs from other sources before forwarding to the User Community Board.

Title	Provider	Link to document	Processing status	Link to captured requirements
SHARE Roadmap	Healthgrid community	[1]	Processed by UCST	[2]
ESFRI project requirements for Pan-European e-infrastructure resources and facilities	European E-Infrastructure Forum	[3]	Processed by UCST	[4]
Production Grid Infrastructure - Use Case Collection v1	Open Grid Forum	[5]	Processed by UCST	[6]
Request for Enhancements of gLite to support bio-NMR applications; Updated Request for Enhancements of gLite to support bio-NMR applications	Deploying and unifying the NMR e-Infrastructure in System Biology (e-NMR)	[7], [8]	New
gLite requirements collected by the EGEE Project Technical Forum	EGEE project	[9]	New
Engaging industry in Grid Computing	OGF under E&T	[10]	New
Policy Supporting Grid Education and Training	OGF	[11] [12]	New
Policies in Cooperation on t-Infrastructure	OGF	[13]	New
Certified Grid Engineer Curriculum	OGF	[14]	New
Professional Grid Certification	OGF	[15]	New
e-Infrastructure Education and Training	eIRG ETTF	[16]	New
Grid Education and Training	OGF under ICEAGE	[17]	New
Computing Education	"Distributed Computing Education, Part 5: Intellectual property Rights" Elizabeth van der Meer, Malcolm Atkinson and David Fergusson,, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, (2008),	[18]	New
Curricula Development for e-Science	"Distributed Computing Education, Part 6: Curriculum Development" Elizabeth van der Meer, Malcolm Atkinson and David Fergusson,, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, (2009),	[19]	New
Strategies and Policies to Support and Advance Education in e-Science	"Distributed Computing Education, Part 7: Policy Frameworks" Elizabeth van der Meer, Malcolm Atkinson and David Fergusson,, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, (2009),	[20]	New
Training	OGF	[21]	New
Training modules	OGF	[22] [23] [24]	New
t-Infrastructure	OGF	[25]	New

Surveys for user communities

Surveys and questionnaires are best suited to collect input from known users and user groups on well defined topics. The User Community Support Team of EGI.eu performed the following surveys in order to receive feedback from user communities on particular topics:

Name of the survey	Topic of the survey	Format of the survey	Sent to	Sent (date)	Deadline to answer	Number of responses	Response rate	Link to survey and to collected responses	Processing status	Link to captured requirements
NGI User Support Questionnaire	Discovering the services of NGI User Support Teams; Their capabilities for serving international collaborations; Collecting feedback from NGIs on existing user services and for their improvements	Email with attached doc	Main contacts of every NGI User Support Team	25.09-05.10/2010	Continuous collection of responses	12 (out of XX)		Processed answers	Processed by UCST	NGI USTs
VO questionnaire on EMI middleware transition and features	How does the transition of gLite services from v3.1 to v3.2 affect user communities; What enhancements user communities require in the ARC, gLite and UNICORE middleware by April 2011 (foreseen release date of EMI middleware 1.0)	Email	Administrators of every registered EGI VO; Coordinators of Heavy User Communities	07/10/2010	18/10/2010	23 (out of 223)	10.3%	VOs XLS file in EGI.eu Humyo and HUCs XLS file in EGI.eu Humyo	Processed by UCST	VOs and HUCs

Requirements captured at (user) events

Event	Session (if relevant)	Provider of requirements	Processing status	Link to captured requirements
EGI Technical Forum	ESFRI sessions	ESFRI projects	Processed by UCST	EGI TF 2010 Summary
EGI Technical Forum	HUCs sessions	HUCs	Processed by UCST	EGI TF 2010 Summary

Our partners in capturing requirements

EEF - European E-infrastructure Forum

EEF homepage - http://www.einfrastructure-forum.eu/

EEF Work documents - https://documents.egi.eu/public/ListBy?topicid=1

2010, ESFRI Projects requirements report by EEF - https://documents.egi.eu/public/ShowDocument?docid=12

2008, ESFRI Projects requirements report by EEF - http://www.einfrastructure-forum.eu/documents/EEF-report

Members:

• EGI - http://www.egi.eu/
• DEISA - http://www.deisa.eu/
• PRACE - http://www.prace-project.eu/
• Terena - http://www.terena.org/
• GEANT - http://www.geant.net

ESFRI Projects

Requirements of Communities observed at EGI TF 2010 Summary

Reasearch Infrastructures (RIs) - http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=projects

List of ESFRI Infrastructures