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Portal Technologies

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Revision as of 14:07, 23 February 2012 by Sipos (talk | contribs) (→‎Questions)
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Introduction

Empowering scientific communities with tools that enable them to make use of  European Grid Infrastructure services is important for the successful engagement of EGI with new users. Portal technologies play an important role within this respect.

Portals can eliminate barriers of e-Infrastructure access, portals can seamlessly integrate the grid and the web. Because of their strong relation to users, portals are typically geared to specific users, applications, scientific use cases. Several national and community-specific teams and projects offer portals and/or "portal builder technologies" in EGI. With such a diversity it becomes difficult to make a decision on which portal to user if you are a user, builder technology to consider if you are a portal developer.


EGI responded to this need with the setup of the below "portal technology comparison table". The table provides a review of existing and reusable portals, portal developer frameworks, portlets and components that exist within EGI. The table aims to help scientific communities and their software teams identify solutions that best meet their needs and should be considered when accessing or building portals."

The questions that are used within the table to present and compate the technologies have been defined through an open process within EGI during December 2011 - January 2012.

New entries can be added to the table by anyone through an [LINK online survey]. The survey is composed of two sections which collect basic and more detailed information about the technology to be added to the table.

Questions

Basic information


1. Name of the technology (Lifera, P-GRADE Portal,  Other)

2. Webpage of the technology.

3. The described technology is:

* a complete portal (can be used “as it is”, its features cannot be customised)

* a portal framework (can be used “as it is”, and additionally features can be added, removed, changed)

* a portal component (for example a portlet, or a library for portal developers)

Detailed information


4. Is the technology open source? Under what license?

5. Who are the potential users of the technology and what kind of skills do they need to have? (e.g., which programming language skills are needed if the technology is for portal developers)

6. What are the key features of the technology? (e.g., list of portlets in case of a complete portal)

7. What are the distinguished features of the technology? (features that make this technology different from similar solutions)

8. Which EGI services are accessible through the technology? (e.g., middleware services - gLite, ARC, Globus, Unicore; other services like a Helpdesk, a Requirements tracker, etc.)

9. What is the supported security model and technology?

10. Does the portal support workflow execution? If yes, for which workflow system?

11. Is the technology available for download, or is it hosted as a service? 



EGI Portal Technology Comparison Table

The collected info is displayed in the following table.

Technology name Technology availability Portal category Software license Security model Target audience Skills Features Key features EGI services available Workflow support Science gateway/Portal examples
Bundle of: Downloadable
  • Complete portal : Pylons
  • Portal framework : Dirac and robot certificate APIs
Open source (GPL) n.a. Portal developers
  • python
  • web portal development
  • grid accounting
  • grid admin
  • system admin
  • Pylons
    • open source Web application framework written in Python.
    • extensively use of the Web Server Gateway Interface standard to promote reusability and to separate functionality into distinct modules.
  • Robot certificate API
    • extracts proxy certificate from Aladdin etoken key
  • DIRAC
    • manages workload and data in a distributed computing environment
This allows the direcPylons is a Python web framework.t integration of all in-house/community python bioinformatics scripts.

Dirac API use Pylons.

WMS, Storage Elements, VOMS, myproxy n.a.

MaxOcc, Antechamber, AnisoFIT, Xplor-NIH, AMPS-NMR

Drupal Downloadable Portal framework Open source (GPL) n.a.
  • webdevelopers
  • webdesigners
  • site managers
  • Essential for developers
    • Programing languages (PHP, HTML, CSS)
    • SQL database management
  • For specific applications
    • Javascript
    • jQuery
  • Basic core
  • Rich module repository
  • Modules are easily adapted/built for specific needs
One of the most useful and used frameworks for community websites.
  • EGI requirements tracker (WeNMR specific)
  • Submission of EGI requirements
  • Applications database (WeNMR specific)
n.a. WeNMR science gateway
WS-PGRADE Portal Hosted as a service Complete portal Open source (GPL) n.a. Researchers that want to create images and movies with own dataset Portlet based iPhone/Smartphone application linked to the portlet (in progress) Middleware n.a. VisIVOWeb
  • Front end: HTML/PHP/CSS
  • Management and interfacing with the software: Python, Shell script
Hosted as a service. Although the Python based validation component of the HADDOCK, CS-ROSETTA, UNIO and GROMACS portals is available as framework and can be downloaded. Complete portal Open source n.a. All portals are developed with common programming languages without specific frameworks apart from the Spyder python framework for data validation. The list of automated grid submission and polling scripts used behind the portals is available here Simplicity – combination of mainly python and shell scripting gLite WMS and LB n.a.

HADDOCK, CS-ROSETTA, 3D-DART, GROMACS, UNIO

  • Front end: HTML/PHP/CSS
  • Management and interfacing with the software: Python, Shell script
Hosted as a service Complete portal Open source. A valid license is needed for the use of one of the software portals (CYANA). n.a. Python-CGI, shell script and HTML The list of automated grid submission and polling scripts used behind the portals is available here Simplicity – combination of mainly python and shell scripting gLite WMS and LB n.a.

CYANA, MARS, MDD-NMR, UPLABEL