Comparsion of Grid Portals

Our ideal portal would

• Be easily to use and extend. Realistically this means excellent assistance to install and use it. Email is ok, but phone and face-to-face contact with developers is best.
• Actively being developed.
• Easy to add new users, yet secure.
• Handles certificates 'well'. Possibly mapping between groups, certificates and Unix accounts.
• Submit multiple jobs.
• Monitor and control jobs
• Parameter sweep.
• View data, allow extensions to visualise, etc.

Gridport

• http://gridport.npaci.edu
• A set of Perl modules which wrap Globus (also java,python)
• Designed to be used by others - they take the modules and reuse them.
• Certificate based portal authentication.
• http://hotpage.npaci.edu is an example.

Gridsphere

• http://www.gridsphere.org
• by Gridlab at AEI, Germany
• GPDK was the previous iteration (this is now unsupported)
• Based on Portlets (composable elements to a webpage)
• Use JSP custom tags to build an interface
• Medium size mailing list and a few active users.
• Many techs (Castor, Cactus, Portlets) - lots to learn.
• Designed as a portal with Grid in mind, but Grid is added via portlets.
• Appears well established.
• Job submission lower priority.
• https://portal.gridlab.org/ is a demo you can use.
• Looked JetSpeed and didn't use.

OGCE: Open Grid Computing Environment

• http://www.ogce.org
• Serveral USA university collaborating
• Based on JetSpeed, Tomcat and Globus 3
• 'All in one' package (128mb download!)
• Portlets for many purposes, including GridFTP, GRAM, File Browsing.
• Job submission one part of large project.
• AstroGrid dumped Jetspeed.
• No demo, screenshots at http://www.ogce.org/screenshots.php

ASC: Astrophysics Simulation Collaboration

• https://www.ascportal.org/project/progress.html
• precursor to Gridsphere. Now out of date (webpage updated 2001)
• Uses Cactus code architecture, with extensions to perform most of the tasks we need, but ...
• Works be user starting there 'CactusZeus' job on a machine; this jobs REPORTS back to the portal which displays the results. The portal allows users to view current status/timestep, visualise data.
• This communcation is NOT globus, but XML/SOAP.
• Some out-of-date work with Globus 2.2, not supported or useable.
• New work being done of Cactus simulation portals (Washington Uni).
• Demo is dead.

Other bits and bobs

Extreme Uni Indiana

• http://www.extreme.indiana.edu
• MyProxy (part of COG) easy-to-use API for portlets
• Portlets for basic job submission (not useful really)
• GridFTP file browser portlet

-- BrettBeeson - 02 Dec 2003