Today's scientific accomplishments are often the result of cross-
disciplinary collaborations and can involve large communities. Science
and engineering fields are increasingly driven by an explosion of
digital information. Scientists are adapting by designing their own
interfaces to databases, sensors, and instruments. They are creating
complex workflows available through gateways or Web portals.
We see
gateways in many domains—astronomy, chemistry, earthquake mitigation,
geophysics, global atmospheric research, neuroscience, molecular
biology, cognitive science, physics, and seismology. TeraGrid's
Science Gateway program facilitates the use of TeraGrid's high end compute,
data, and visualization through community-designed interfaces.
With traditional use, each researcher obtains his or her own allocation
on a computing resource,
connecting from the command line of each supercomputer or storage resource
and setting up individual codes and environments. Researchers
have to do most of the work, bringing together the tools and finding
the best resources to accomplish their research goals.
Gateways, on the other hand, enable entire communities of users
associated with a common scientific discipline to use national resources
through a common interface that is already configured for optimal use.
While talented gateway developers
are required to enable this use, the benefits of their work can extend
to many more end users, allowing researchers to focus on their research
and fostering collaborations.
What is a Gateway?
A Science Gateway is a community-developed set of tools, applications, and
data that is integrated via a portal or a suite of applications, usually
in a graphical user interface, that is customized to meet the needs of
the targeted community.
Some gateways expose customized sets of community codes so that scientists
or students
can run them. Others bring new services and applications to the community
that would otherwise not be accessible. Depending on the needs of the
specific community, any of the capabilities below might be provided
in a typical TeraGrid Science Gateway:
- Workflows
- Visualization software and hardware
- Resource discovery
- Job execution services
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- Access to data collections
- Domain-specific computational applications
- Data analysis and movement tools
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Behind the Scenes
The common trait of all TeraGrid Science Gateways is their interaction
with the TeraGrid through the various service interfaces that TeraGrid provides.
The PI sponsoring the gateway requests an allocation from the
TeraGrid. When this request is approved, the PI can create accounts
for individual developers, but can also request a community account.
Developers enhance a gateway to launch jobs using the community
account.
A gateway user will log on to the gateway, but does not need his or her
own TeraGrid account in order to make use of the resources. Gateway
developers can control account management, accounting, certificates
management, and user support for their own gateway users.
What Kinds of Gateways Are There?
Gateways can be categorized broadly according to the way the user connects
to the portal and to what resources the portal connects to on the back end.
We have seen three common instantiations:
- Web portal: The user interface is a Web browser-based
application with users in front and TeraGrid services in back.
- Desktop application: The interface is an application or
suite of applications that run directly on users' machines
and that accesses TeraGrid services.
- Grid-bridging gateway: Some communities run their own
grids that are devoted to their areas of science. In these cases, the gateway
is a mechanism to extend the reach of their community grid so its users can
also use the resources of the TeraGrid.
Can I Use an Existing Gateway?
Gateways are independent projects, each of which has its own guidelines
for access. Most gateways are available for use by anyone, although they usually
target a
particular research audience. Some gateways are also appropriate for use
by educators. See the
Gateway List page for a list of
gateways sorted by domain science area. Research a gateway
in your area of interest to see if educational components exist.
See the section Using TeraGrid
Science Gateways for more information about what is available
and how a gateway can help accomplish research goals.
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