Science Gateways and Portals Minitrack

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Science gateways are a community-specific set of tools, applications, and data collections that are integrated together via a web portal or a desktop application, providing access to resources and services for distributed data management and distributed computing infrastructures (DCIs). They offer easy and intuitive access to computing infrastructures and instruments irrespective of their location. The challenges in the area of gateways are manifold: from intuitive user interfaces and security features through efficient data and workflow management to parallelization of applications employing parallel and distributed architectures. In the last decade, quite a few innovations and developments have taken place on user interface layer and services layer and are reflected on DCI level in projects like XSEDE, NeCTAR, and local infrastructures. Diverse mature technologies are available and under active development: from portal frameworks through workflow-enabled grid/cloud portals and workbenches to platforms to ease the development of gateways supporting DCIs and access to data sources. Each approach has its own community and the implementations are designed to meet the specific needs and provide methodologies for analyzing data. We believe that efficient support of communities demands to maintain and further develop the different approaches without re-inventing the wheel. Thus, it is crucial to bring together users, gateway developers and gateway providers to discuss problems and solutions in the area, to identify new issues, to shape future directions for research, foster the exchange of ideas, standards and common requirements and push towards the wider adoption of gateways.

Key areas we will address are:

  • Gateway enabling technologies and development frameworks
  • Ready to use gateways in different areas and disciplines
  • Management of high-throughput data via gateways
  • Portal technology and portal construction methods
  • Usage models and gateway tools in different disciplines
  • Security aspects of gateways
  • Usability studies of gateways
  • Workflows and service composition in gateways
  • Demonstrations/success stories

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Sandra Gesing (Primary Contact)
University of Notre Dame
Email: sandra.gesing@nd,edu

Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
San Diego Computer Center
Email: wilkinsn@sdsc.edu

Michelle Barker
NeCTAR, Australia
Email: michelle.barker@unimelb.edu.au

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Science Gateways: The Long Road to the Birth of an Institute
    ( 2017-01-04) Gesing, Sandra ; Wilkins-Diehr, Nancy ; Dahan, Maytal ; Lawrence, Katherine ; Zentner, Michael ; Pierce, Marlon ; Hayden, Linda ; Marru, Suresh
    Nowadays, research in various disciplines is enhanced via computational methods, cutting-edge technologies and diverse resources including computational infrastructures and instruments. Such infrastructures are often complex and researchers need means to conduct their research in an efficient way without getting distracted with information technology nuances. Science gateways address such demands and offer user interfaces tailored to a specific community. Creators of science gateways face a breadth of topics and manifold challenges, which necessitate close collaboration with the domain specialists but also calling in experts for diverse aspects of a science gateway such as project management, licensing, team composition, sustainability, HPC, visualization, and usability specialists. The Science Gateway Community Institute tackles the challenges around science gateways to support domain specialists and developers via connecting them to diverse experts, offering consultancy as well as providing a software collaborative, which contains ready-to-use science gateway frameworks and science gateway components.
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    Maintaining a Science Gateway – Lessons Learned from MoSGrid
    ( 2017-01-04) Zimmermann, Lukas ; Grunzke, Richard ; Krüger, Jens
    We here present the experiences collected maintaining and updating the MoSGrid science gateway over the past years. Insights are provided on a technical and organizational level useful for the design and operation of science gateways in general. The specific challenges faced and solved are considered to be valuable for other communities.
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    Introduction to Science Gateways and Portals Minitrack
    ( 2017-01-04) Gesing, Sandra ; Wilkins-Diehr, Nancy ; Barker, Michelle