User Interfaces

This wiki page provides information about user interfaces that provide command line and/or API access to the middleware services of the EGI e-infrastructure. The information on this page has been collected by the User Community Support Team of EGI.eu.

Information about graphical environments to interact with the European Grid Infrastructure can be found in the EGI Application Database: http://appdb.egi.eu. (Both reusable tools for software developers and reusable applications for scientific end users are available through this database.)

Related request from the user communities: 2nd User Community Board meeting, action 02/12: https://www.egi.eu/indico/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=313

For comments and updates please email to ucst@egi.eu.

Software name	Contact(s)	Status	Client type	Supported platform	Supported middleware
MILU (1)	Stefano[1]Cozzini Tyanko[2]Aleksiev	active / Dec. 2010	CLI	Linux	gLite, ARC, Globus TK
UNICORE - UCC (2,3)	unicore-web@unicore.eu	active / Apr. 2011	CLI	Linux	Unicore, ARC
UNICORE - URC[3](4)	unicore-web@unicore.eu	active / Apr. 2011	GUI	Linux, MacOS X, Windows	Unicore, ARC
g-Eclipse (5)	contact@geclipse.eu	stopped ? / Dec. 2009	GUI	all	gLite
jLite (6)	Oleg[4]Sukhoroslov	? / Oct. 2010	CLI, API	all	gLite
Grid2Win (7)	INFN(Dario[5]Russo)	stopped (?) / 2008	GUI	Win XP Pro/Home Edition (SP 1 / 2)	gLite 3.1
GILDA[6]UI[7]PnP[8](8,9)	gilda-sitemanagers@ct.infn.it	? /	CLI	Linux	gLite 3.0/3.1
ARC- command[9]line (10,11)	NorduGrid	active / May 2011	CLI	Linux (deb & rpm)	ARC, Globus, gLite, Unicore
ARC- ArcGui (12)	NorduGrid	active / May 2011	GUI	Linux, MacOS X, Windows	ARC, Globus, gLite, Unicore
Migrating[10]Desktop[11]Platform (13)	PL-Grid	? / 2011	GUI	all	gLite
gLite[12]UI (14)	?	?/2011	CLI	Linux	gLite, ARC (via WMS)
EMI-UI (15)		active / June 2011	CLI	Linux (SL 5.5 i386 / x86_64)	ARC, dCache, gLite, UNICORE

Notes:

(1)

Miramare Interoperable Lite UI. It is a software tool which allows seamless usage of different Grid infrastructures from a Linux workstation. It has been implemented by re-packaging of the gLite UI, arc UI, Globus Toolkit software and a few other customizations available for several Linux distributions. It is intended to offer an almost Plug ’n Play environment which enables transparent access of these three Grid infrastructures.It has been tested and is known to be working on several GNU/Linux distributions, including Scientific Linux, CentOS and Ubunto. Milu has already built-in support for several VO’s (e.g. compchem, gilda, enmr.eu ... ) and is easily configurable to add other VO’s. Current User Guide can be found here.

(2)

On the top layer a variety of clients is available to the users, ranging from the command-line interface named UCC , the Eclipse-based UNICORE Rich Client to the programming API named HiLA[13]. UNICORE 6 services can also be accessed from portals, using technologies such as GridSphere and The[14]Vine[15]Toolkit.

(3)

The UNICORE command line client (UCC) is a very versatile command-line tool that allows users to access all features of the UNICORE service layer in a shell or scripting environment. It allows to run jobs, monitor their status and retrieve generated output, both in single job mode or in a powerful and flexible batch mode for multiple jobs. Additionally, workflows can be submitted and controlled with the UCC. UCC includes several data management functions. Remote storages can be listed and files can be transferred from local to remote as well as from server to server. UCC can be used for administrative purposes as well, for example to list all jobs, or to perform some clean up. An important feature of UCC is its extensibility, where new commands can easily be added.

(4)

The Eclipse-based UNICORE Rich Client (URC) offers the full set of functionalities to the users in a graphical representation. It targets a wide range of users with varying Grid and IT experience. It provides a useful graphical view of the Grid, which can be filtered in order to find specific resources, services or files. Supported by all OSes (Java based).

(5)

The g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development. The framework will provide tools to customize Grid users' applications, to manage Grid resources and to support the development cycle of new Grid applications. Therefore, already existing tools (such as the[16]Migrating[17]Desktop, the[18]GridBench suite, the Grid Visualisation Kernel (GVK), ...) will be integrated. The project will aim for general Grid workbench tools that can be extended for many different Grid middlewares (such as gLite, UNICORE, Globus toolkit), starting with implementations for the gLite middleware.

(6)

jLite is a Java library providing simple API for accessing gLite based grid infrastructure. It is intended for Java developers who struggle with gLite middleware and want to reduce time and effort needed to build a cross-platform grid application on top of the EGEE grid infrastructure. jLite also includes a command-line interface which can be used as a simple cross-platform alternative to gLite User Interface on Windows and other operating systems.

Existing Java APIs for gLite are scattered among several packages and expose mostly low-level service operations. Available API usage examples often imply the presence of gLite User Interface environment installed on Scientific Linux. This complicates the use of these APIs for development of cross-platform grid applications. jLite is addressing these problems by providing a high-level Java API with functionality similar to gLite shell commands. Current implementation supports complete gLite job management lifecycle including VOMS proxy creation and delegation, transfer of job input files, job submission, job status monitoring and retrieval of job output files. Normal, collection and parametric gLite jobs are supported. The API hides complexity of underlying middleware and its configuration. jLite is easy to install because it includes all external dependencies and does not require installation of gLite User Interface. The library is pure Java and can be used on any Java-capable platform including Windows.

GILDA VO is supported by default.

(7)

The Grid2Win project aims at creating a[19]gLite User Interface (UI) and a[20]gLite Compute Element (CE) running on Microsoft Windows (based on gLite 3.1). This project seems to be down.

(8)

Gilda is a grid testbed and provides a Plug and Play UI (tar ball) for gLite 3.0/3.1 for Linux. Though it is pre-configured to use gilda VO resources, it is straightforward to re-configure it for other VO’s (e.g. enmr.eu did it in the past). Gilda also started to provide VMware[21]instances for gLite UI 3.1. Notice: several links are dead/non-existing, probably due to a recent migration of Gilda portal contents to a LifeRay CMS container.

EGEE/EGI Indico events about this software. Keywords : “user interface”

• PlugAndPlay[22]User[23]Interface: a[24]simple[25]grid[26]access[27]designed[28]on[29]the[30]basis[31]of[32]grid[33]user[34]requirements.

(9)

GILDA virtual instances are a valuable example of what can be accomplished with virtualization technology. The user does not need to have a deep knowledge to instantiate a guest with a pre-configured UI to meet his needs. That is to say, mapping a UI with a operating system (as it is done in the above table) does not have anymore a huge relevance here. Because pre-built virtual machines can be deployed by all users (no matter the OS they work with). The users only need to have an hypervisor up and running on their host machine, and run the guest without any concerns.

(10)

The command line user interface of ARC consists of a set of commands necessary for job submission and manipulation and data management.

(11)

ARC also provides the Lunarc[35]Application[36]Portal, a lightweight application portal for accessing Grid resources. The Lunarc Application Portal is an ongoing development to provide a framework for developing portals for Grid resources. Existing versions of the portal also used ARC for job submission, job monitoring and job control.

(12)

The ArcGui application is a standalone graphical user interface for simple job submission and job control. The user interface uses the wxPython graphical user interface library, which is a Python binding for the wxWidgets library. The benefits of using wxPython is that the finished application can be run on all available platforms, such as Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. In addition to being platform independent, wxPython also adapts the appearance of the user interface to the target platform, so that when the application is run on Windows it will look like a native Windows application.

(13)

The Migrating Desktop platform is a powerful and flexible user interface to grid resources which gives a work environment transparent to the user and easy access to resources and network file systems independently of the system version and hardware. It allows user to run applications and tools, manage data files, and store personal settings independently of the location or the terminal type. A brochure can be found here.

EGEE/EGI Indico events about this software. Keywords : “user interface”

• Migrating[37]Desktop- graphical[38]front-end[39]to[40]grid
• Migrating[41]Desktop[42]Platform– graphical[43]interactive[44]framework[45]for[46]running[47]grid[48]applications
• Uniform[49]access[50]to[51]the[52]Grid- Migrating[53]Desktop[54]Platform

(14)

gLite is a middleware for grid computing that was born from the collaborative efforts of more than 80 people in 12 different academic and industrial research centers as part of the[55]EGEE[56]Project. gLite provides a framework for building grid applications tapping into the power of distributed computing and storage resources across the Internet.

(15)

The emi-ui is a suite of clients and APIs that users and applications can use to access grid services. The access point to the Grid-Infrastructure is the User Interface (UI). This can be any machine where users have a personal account and where their user certificate is installed. From a UI a user can be authenticated and authorized to use the GRID resources, and can access the functionalities offered by the Information, Workload and Data Management Systems. The user guide can be found here.