Progress Report Nov 29th

Grid tag libraries was implemented, Java package implementation is almost completed. ComponetBuilderBean and Component parser classes are improved to generate JSF components out of XML tags. We're currently testing available features and fixing bugs. We'll also provide example JSF pages that uses Grid tag libraries.

Grid tag libraries can be implemented using web services as factory providing Grid services. This framework can be compared with WSRF or GT4 counterparts. Web services for Grid job submissions internally use Java Cog to access GT services.

Progress Report Nov 1st

Grid tags and beans

Grid tags and beans has implemented as explained in the new approach. Prerequisites are for the implementation.
- Compile with Java 5
- Latest version of Java Cog which is 4_1_4.
- Of course maven 2 is the building tool
- I prefer to work on eclipse IDE environment. It's not mandatory for anyone.
- SVN tool for version control.
The implementation would be in multi steps. We're going to consider to use Taverna, DAGman workflows besides CoG taskgraph.

Regarding the implementation there are some reengineering from the older version. For example, tag and UI classes would be re-written with new attributes. Grid Bean classes support additional methods and besides older ones.

The major work is on ComponentBuilderBean class that is responsible for building UI component trees out of Grid tags from JSF pages. We need to find a generic way to implement it. Second part is managing job submissions and monitoring the results. We can borrow ideas from the previous implementation, but it is not totally reengineering of the code. Most of the work is on 'ogce.gsf.factory' and 'ogce.gsf.multitask' packages. It’s going to be finished next week. Currently I've finished 'ogce.gsf.components', 'ogce.gsf.gridtags' and 'ogce.gsf.gridbeans' packages.

GCE 2006 workshop

We’ve submitted Grid tags and beans paper to GCE 2006 workshop held with Supercomputing 2006. We’ve got excellent reviews and we’re going to present it Nov. 12-13. I’ve prepared ppt slides for that workshop.

Taverna

Taverna provides workflow engine that is Taverna Enactor. Taverna basically implements the Scufl workflow language. Tag libraries should have a converter in between scufl and JSF tags. Or else Tag libraries are able to import scufl snippets in JSF. There also should be connection with Taverna enactor. Currently ‘submit’ tag calls action methods of the Grid beans. In case Taverna, ‘submit’ tag should tie to action method of Taverna Enactor using Taverna beans.

DAGMan

DAGMan is Condor workflow mechanism. Its features are very similar to Java Cog Taskgraph, mostly intended to provide multi-staged and batch job submissions. Condor jobs work with input files which are configuration of the job parameters. Similar to Java Cog ‘multitask’, JSF Grid tags should be extended with Condor DAGman tags.


TACC Condor portlets are an example implementation of Condor Java clients. However, there is no DAGMan API exist with it. We’re considering using BirdBath that provides Grid services for Condor. So Web services client stub enables us to generate Java client proxies to use as Condor beans.

GridSphere

I've looked at GridSphere servlet and login modules to alter the authentication module. In my case, it was requiring substantial changes on GS codebase. However, one can access to GridSphere ‘logged-in page’ by giving request parameters on the URL. Adding username and password parameters to the URL would be fine. That redirects to GridSphere from any other web application.
http://serverurl:8080/gridsphere/gridsphere&gs_action=gs_login&cid=login&username=root&password=******
If you apply this URL on the browser window, it'll show you the "logged in" GridSphere page. This may be as secure as TLS (https). Passing the username and password parameter on the URL (even with hidden URLs) is not a secure way.

For more information about GridSphere user login, you can also look at GridSphereServlet.java and login.jsp in GS source code.