GridSphere: A Portal Framework

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GridSphere A Portal Framework

• By Jason Novotny
• Jnovotny_at_ncmir.ucsd.edu
• Presented by Ramil Manansala

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What is a Portal?

• A portal is a web based application that
  commonly provides personalization, single sign
  on, content aggregation from different sources
  and hosts the presentation layer of Information
  Systems(JSR 168)
• Grid/Science Portals build upon the familiar Web
  portal model, such as Yahoo or Amazon, to deliver
  the benefits of Grid computing to virtual
  communities of users, providing a single access
  point to Grid services and resources.

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Portal Bridges Users and Services

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Application Portals

• A Portal is only as good as the underlying
  deployed infrastructure
• Many application portals are stovepipe solutions
  that provide a complete solution with very little
  customization capabilities
• Separation of presentation and login
• Generally hard coding of underlying Grid
  infrastructure details
• Lack of real usability has made it difficult to
  test and evaluate user interfaces
• Scientific portals require much more support for
  persistence and robust transactions than ordinary
  eCommerce style portals
• Web application development still remains a
  tedious task with little in the way of reusable
  components, forcing developers to constantly
  re-invent the wheel

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Portal / Content Management Standards

• JSR 168 Portlet API ratified August 2003
• Similar to Servlet API in providing reusable web
  applications
• Ratified by vendors including BEA, Sun, IBM,
  Oracle, Plumtree and others...
• WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) ratified
  by OASIS committee
• Specifies how web services can be consumed by
  standards compliant portals
• Java Server Faces (JSR-127) ratified
• Specifies an event based user interface for web
  presentation development
• JSR 170 Content Management API
• Jakarta Jackrabbit project provides open source
  implementation

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What is a Portlet?

• Builds off Servlet API and spec. so no major
  surprises for existing Java portal developers
• Supports window states and mode settings like
  desktop environment
• API provides useful methods for storing per user
  data and configuration settings
• Standardized packaging model to share portlet
  applications among portal vendors

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www.gridsphere.org
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GridSphere 2.0 Feature List

• Portlet API passed Sun TCK and is 100 JSR 168
  compliant
• Additional Portlet API implementation nearly
  fully compatible with IBM's WebSphere 4.2.
  (GridSphere 2.0)
• Support for the easy development and integration
  of new portlet applications
• Template project generation and build scripts
  makes life easier for developers
• Higher-level model for building complex portlets
  using visual beans and the GridSphere User
  Interface (UI) tag library
• Flexible XML based portal presentation
  description can be easily modified to create
  customized portal layouts
• Built-in support for Role Based Access Control
  (RBAC) separating users into guests, users,
  admins and super users
• Sophisticated portlet service model that allows
  for creation and reusability of new business
  logic with support for persistence of data

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GridSphere 2.0 Feature List ...

• Persistence of data provided using Hibernate OQL
  for database support
• Supports many databases including hsqlDB, MySQL,
  Postgres,
• Prototype Junit/Cactus unit tests for complete
  server side testing of portlet services including
  the generation of test reports
• GridSphere core portlets
• Login, Logout, Locale settings
• Profile personalization and Layout customization
• Administration portlets for creation of users,
  groups, portlet management and portal layout
  customization
• Localization support in the Portlet API
  implementation and portlets support French,
  English, German, Czech, Polish, Hungarian and
  Italian, Arabic and Chinese!
• Pluggable authentication modules allows admin to
  select among supported modules, or develop new
  ones Hashed password, JAAS (GridPortlets has
  MyProxy auth module)
• Open-source and 100 free! -)

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What makes GridSphere different?

• Already many other OS portals out there
• Jetspeed2, uPortal, StringBeans, Exo, Liferay,
  Jboss
• A handy template build system using Ant
• ant new-project
• Lightweight no EJB, based on popular, robust
  libraries e.g. Hibernate for persistence
• Ability to add support for new authentication
  schemes with pluggable auth modules descriptor
• Visual UI tags and beans makes presentation
  development much easier
• Support for the Grid!!
• GridPortlets offered as add-on webapp
• Provides Library and collection of portlets for
• Credential management, job execution, data
  transfer (gridftp)

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GridSphere Implementation

• The GridSphere portlet container is implemented
  as a web application and requires a hosting
  environment such as the Jakarta Tomcat container.
  
• Many additional libraries are used and deployed
  to the servlet container during installation.

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Portlet Life-Cycle

• The GridSphere portlet container loads and
  instantiates portlet classes.

Portal
Browser
processAction
Portlet Container
Portlets
Rendered output
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Portlet Deployment Descriptor

• A Portlet Deployment Descriptor provides the
  portlet container with portlet configuration
  information
• Defines a collection of portlet definitions as an
  XML schema e.g. portlet.xml
• A portlet definition defines configuration
  information valid for a single portlet/servlet
  for all users
• Specifies portlet deployment attributes
• Supported markups, portlet modes and window
  states
• Display name and title information
• Security role information
• Supported locales
• Specifying caching information

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GridSphere Presentation

• Portal uses header and double layer tabbed pane
  to organize content
• Portal layout specified as XML descriptor
• Examples
• Hello
• org.gridlab
  .gridsphere.portlets.examples.HalloWelt.1-class

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Presentation Tag Library

• GridSphere provides value-added UI JSP tag
  library
• Goal is to minimize HTML usage
• UI tags can provide platform independence e.g.
  support HTML and WML
• Example tag usage in JSP
• taglib uri"http//java.sun.com/portlet"
  prefix"portlet"
• maxlength"20"/
• maxlength"20"/

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Portlet Services

• A portlet service moves logic from a portlet to
  a reusable service that may be used by other
  portlets
• PortletService is the base interface for all
  portlet services
• PortletService instances are created by a
  PortletServiceFactory
• Similar to Portlets, PortletService objects are
  configured at initialization with a
  PortletServiceConfig object
• A service may be created per instance or cached
• PortletServices can make use of GridSphere
  provided persistence classes
• Similar to Spring service framework

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GridSphere Security

• Access control based on 4 defined role priorities
  within a group
• Guest
• A guest is anyone that has not logged in and has
  access to public website
• An admin has permissions to manage users in the
  group and edit group layout
• Super is the portal administrator
• A group defines a set of deployed portlets with
  access restrictions
• Users can be in multiple groups

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Core User Portlets

• Login/Logout portlet
• Enables user to logon/logout
• Allows user to refresh password if forgotten
• Configurable option enables new users to request
  an account .
• Locale portlet
• Simple locale chooser in the portal banner offers
  support for 7 languages
• User profile portlet
• Enables users to configure personal information
  e.g. name, email, locale, preferences
• Layout configuration portlet
• Enables users to customize their layout by
  creating new tabs which portlets can be easily
  added to.

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Core Administrative Portlets

• User Manager Portlet
• Enables admins to create/delete/edit portal users
• Group Manager Portlet
• Enables admins to add/remove users to/from
  portlet groups
• Enables admins to select whether a group is
  public or private (public means anyone can join,
  private requires an administrator approval)
• Portlet Manager Portlet
• Enables admins to start, stop, or redeploy a
  portlet application
• Layout Manager Portlet
• Enables admins to edit existing group layouts

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New GridSphere features

• GS portlet development model including portlet
  services, visual tags/beans made compliant with
  other containers!

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New GridSphere features

• Integration with Jakarta Portals-bridges project
• Can now use existing Struts applications in
  GridSphere!
• Can now add new roles
• Associated with existing role priorities of
  Guest, Admin, User and Super
• Portlet web applications can provide role
  descriptor
• Added new tracking portlet and tag attributes for
  monitoring user actions in the portal
• Can monitor most popular functions and even
  download statistics in Excel format
• New layout developments using pure CSS and XHTML
• Support for JAAS authentication module

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GridSphere in Action!

• One step installation-- just ant install

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Ingredients of a successful OS project

• A primary goal has been to engage global
  community
• GGF hosted GridSphere tutorials
• UK eScience GridSphere workshop March 2004
• Thousands of downloads all over the world
• 80 commercial / 20 academic
• Adopt standard / open source engineering
  practices
• Mail lists (over 200 users subscribed)
• CVS
• JIRA Bug tracker bugs.gridsphere.org
• Listening to users and developers
• New features added depending on community demand

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Open Grid Portals

• www.opengridportals.org formed after March Mardi
  Gras workshop to build grid portlet community
• Advertise projects developing grid portal
  solutions
• Advertise portlet development in specific
  application domains e.g. astrophysics, earth
  science, biosciences
• Provide repository / references to reusable grid
  portlets
• Provide knowledge exchange in grid portal
  development / deployment

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OpenGridPortals.org
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GridSphere Project Sponsors

• University of California, San Diego
• BIRN Portal Project to provide tools to
  biomedical researchers
• Define processes, procedures and establish best
  practices so that the BIRN is reliable, scalable
  and extensible to biomedical research programs -
  able to support the work of thousands of
  researchers.
• Push the envelop of biomedical informatics and
  computer science by causing the development of
  new techniques in databases, information
  retrieval, visualization and computational
  processing.
• Telescience Portal controlling large scale
  microscopes, data management

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GridSphere Project Sponsors

• BIRN Project
• Enabling collaborative research at 33 research
  institutions comprised of 41 research groups

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GridSphere Project Sponsors

• Albert Einstein Institute, Berlin, Germany
• Astrophysics portal allowing researchers to
  submit and analyze scientific simulations,
  resource monitoring, job tracking
• Possible Max Planck wide portal collaboration
• Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center,
  Poland
• Involved in many major EU funded projects
• Intelli Grid project
• HPC Europa

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Ongoing Collaborations

• Cactus portal at Albert Einstein Institute
• Interface to Cactus numerical relativity
  application / provide physicists with interface
  for launching jobs viewing results
• Grid Portal at Canadian National Research Council
  
• Provide controlled remote access to NMR
  spectroscopy instruments
• GEON earth sciences portal used to
  manage/visualize/analyze vast amount of
  geoscience data and large scale databases
• GeneGrid portal at Belfast eScience Center
• Goal is to create a virtual bioinformatics
  laboratory
• major involvement with lifesciences and
  biotechnology companies
• Pgrade portal at SZTAKI Hungary Univ.
  Westminster UK
• Creation, execution and monitoring of complex
  workflows
• Many, many more

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Wishlist of Development Areas

• Single Sign On Standards / Identity Solutions
• Liberty / (Grid)Shibboleth / OpenSAML / pubcookie
  / JOSSO / CredEx
• Plugging into existing user/account databases
• More flexible / custom portal layout components
• Provide mechanism for existing websites/portals
  to just add portlets as needed and not require
  entire GS portal
• Possible migration to Spring service framework
• Performance / load testing
• xWiki portlet integration
• More responsive UIs using AJAX technologies
• XMLHttpRequest JavaScript
• AJAX Tag Library available
• Continue to focus on standards / emerging
  technologies
• WSRP(?)
• JSF already supported (one of the first to do so)
• Content management and repository standards JSR
  170 / Jakarta Slide
• (Grid) Business Process Management
• Eclipse plugins / IDE integration / drag and drop
  etc.

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Conclusion

• GridSphere environment allows for distributed
  portal development
• Portlet model is a widely supported standard and
  offers higher-level abstraction for development
  of end-user functionality
• GridSphere provides a standards compliant portlet
  implementation plus much, much more! -)
• Grid portlets provides core set of portlets for
  grid functionality as well as API for developing
  new grid enabled portlets and user interfaces
• GridSphere has received world wide acclaim and a
  growing number of collaborations as a top grid
  portal platform!