Introductions

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Introductions

• Its an experiment that gives students the means
  to
• Discover and apply datasets, algorithms and data
  analysis methods.
• Collaborate by developing new ones and sharing
  results and observations. Build on the results
  of others by reloading another students
  workflow.
• Learn data analysis methods that will ready and
  excite them for a scientific career.
• Its a web site easy to use, ubiquitous, no
  tools to install. It uses the Virtual Data
  System.

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QuarkNet/Grid site
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Improvements For Users

• Redesigned search pages for data files and
  analysis products with user experience in mind.
• Provenance graphs that detail the history of
  data products.
• Image quality improvements using the SVG format
  as supported by the Apache Batik project.

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OLD SEARCH INTERFACE
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Improvements For Users
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Improvements For Users
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Structural Improvements

• No version control before, now we have CVS.
• Managing two machines at U of C with superuser
  privileges.
• Adding users and configuring SSH for them
• Installing software (e.g., Apache, PHP,
  dotproject)
• iptables firewall configuration changes
• We take advantage of web-based project
  management software dotproject
  (http//dotproject.net).
• We use a Wiki for project docs.

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Structural Improvements

• Created an XML Schema defining a common data
  format for cosmic ray data (collaboration with U.
  of Washington physicist Toby Burnett)
• Performance improvements in cosmic ray analysis
  Perl code
• User experiences 50 analysis speedup
• Uploading of data 30 faster
• Fixed critical bug in VDS that filled up the
  thread stack in the Java Virtual Machine
• After fix, stress-tested the site with Apache
  JMeter

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Structural Improvements
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Structural Improvements

• Modified VDS annotation table to use unbounded
  text and redeployed without a service
  interruption.
• Refactored old JSP-only design into a Java Beans
  package hierarchy gov.fnal.elab
• We hope this package will become an e-Lab
  developers toolkit.
• Grid Middleware Service For Virtual Data
  Discovery, Composition, and Integration
• Presented at the 2nd International workshop on
  Middleware for Grid Computing.
• Quarknet/Grid collaborative learning e-Lab
• Presenting at the CLAG 2005.

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Collaboration
EXPERIMENTS
OSG
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Where We Are Going

• Leverage Open Science Grid to run longer,
  tougher jobs.
• Continue the refactoring of our code into
  reusable packages to facilitate the federation of
  e-Labs.
• Integrate other science code
• Cosmic ray code at other sites (Washington,
  etc.)
• Develop new e-Labs CMS test beam data using
  Root (Dan Karmgard, Notre Dame)
• Create a strong user base
• Down the line, expose more of the underlying
  computer science to students
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the program

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Where We Are Going