[seek-dev] Re: EcoGrid

[Jing Tao]

Hi, in my previous email. There is some comments there. They are hard 
to be found :). Sorry for that.

Thanks!

Jing 


On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Jing Tao wrote:

> Hi, Matt:
> 
> It would be good that we have a conference call to discuss Ecogrid. I can 
> make it on Jan 15th, 1pm PST.
> 
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Matt Jones wrote:
> 
> > Hi Raja,
> > 
> > Thanks for the note.  I more or less agree with your assessment. 
> > Unfortunately, I haven't tracked the progress to date very effectively, 
> > so I'm not sure if we're ready to package stuff up.  I think we should 
> > have another conference call to firm up the progress and decide on a 
> > release date and its contents.  The call should include you, me, jing, 
> > bing, dave, and rod at a minimum.  I propose
> >     Thursday January 15th at 1pm PST
> > for a conference call.  Can everyone do it at 1pm PST?  Please let me 
> > know if you can not.  When we finalize the time, I'll send out 
> > conference call information to everyone.
> > 
> > Some additional notes below...
> > 
> > Arcot Rajasekar wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi Matt
> > > 	Bertram, Bing and I had a long conversation about what is done and
> > > what is needed in the next phase of the project.  I looked at what we had
> > > laid out in our Seattle meeting and later confirmed at the  Santa Barbara
> > > meeting. I think we should package the Ecogrid up and
> > > provide it with an easy use client sp that our SEEK scientists canm start
> > > playing with it and give feedback to this.
> > > I suggest that we quickly make the following available:
> > >     1. Server
> > > 	Metacat wrapper  (Jing)
> > > 	SRB Wrapper   (Bing)
> > > 	Digir wrapper (?)
> > >         Xanthoria wrapper (?)
> > Maybe we can get DiGIR out, but I doubt Xanthoria at this point.  I 
> > think Rod has been struggling with getting the basic GT3 setup in place, 
> > which indicates to me that GT3 will likely have some serious deployment 
> > issues.  But no harm in our releasing what we have working in 
> > Metacat/SRB as an alpha of some sort.
> > 
> > > 
> > >      providing the following functionalities:
> > > 	query
> > > 	get
> > > 	put
> > 
> > We haven't implemented "put" AFAIK, unless we got it for free by 
> > switching to using GridFTP.
> 
> 
> MetaCat ecogrid server is up for "query" and "get" function. It is running 
> in both dev and pine.
> 
> 
> > >    3. get a client package
> > >          for java based developer users
> > >          for web-based users with a simple interface into SEEK ecogrid.
> > 
> > Agreed.  Jing has a initial client available.  We can and should package 
> > this as a library for distribution and make a web interface.  But...we 
> > need to do a code review to make sure it is designed properly.  At this 
> > point there has been very little design going into the code that's been 
> > written, so its all rather ad-hoc.  This is mostly because we've been 
> > experimenting with GT3 which has been troublesome at the least.
> > 
> > I also think we should make it a high priority to make Kepler 
> > communicate over the EcoGrid to retrieve data.  This has been the 
> > limiting factor to demonstrating many of the Kepler tools.  I am hoping 
> > Jing can incorporate his current client in Kepler by the BEAM meeting in 
> > ABQ coming up in a few weeks.
> 
> I create a ecogird query client class. It has those public APIs:
> EcogridQueryClient()
> createServiceInstance()
> destroyServiceInstance()
> createUserProxy()
> createEcoGridQueryLevelOnePortType()
> query()
> get()
> 
> I also put the client.jar, stub.jar and other necessery jar files into a 
> zip file- ecogrid_client_lib.zip. If we unzip this file, we will get a dir 
> name ecogrid_client_lib. After we put every jar file of this dir into 
> class path, the client should work.
> 
> But things is not so easy :) We decided use GridFtp to handle get() 
> method and GridFtp need credential. So we need setup grid security in the 
> client. Such as host's certificate, key, user's certificate, key. Also, we 
> need to install GridFtp in client machine. I create a zip file to help 
> person to install it. So it is hard to create a thin client. 
> 
> Another issue is gt3 itself. It is not very robust(probably, my code 
> is not robust too :)) When I run the client code, sometimes it 
> works fine. Sometimes gave some exception even i didn't change any thing. 
> I will continue to digging it out.
> 
> I will try my best to make Kepler communicate over the EcoGrid to retrieve 
> data. But I am not sure if I can finished it before the BEAM meeting 
> beause I don't know too much about Kepler and our ecogrid client is 
> fragile.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Jing
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Jing Tao
National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
735 State St. Suite 204
Santa Barbara, CA 93101