The ScienceStudio project is a partnership between the University of Western Ontario, Concordia University, IBM and Canadian Light Source , The project is a continuation of the ealier Remote Access Project also funded by CANARIE and additional funding from CLS, Surface Science Western (at the University of Western Ontario), IBM Canada and Concordia University to develop the ScienceStudio software.
Project Description
ScienceStudio is a web portal providing access to synchrotron user office functionality, remote beamline access and data storage facilities. Fundamentally it is a tool that permits scientists to manage beamtime, samples and experimental data. Initially targeted at the VESPERS beamline, ScienceStudio will be used to various degrees on other beamlines at the CLS. The CMCF2 beamline remote access system shares some modules with the ScienceStudio. ScienceStudio is also targeted at NanoFab facility located at the University of Western Ontario.
Project Partners
CANARIE, Canada’s advanced Network development organization, is a not-for-profit corporation supported by its members, project partners and the Federal Government. Since 1993, CANARIE has received more that $350 million from the Government of Canada. That funding has been used for the research and implementation of advanced networks and applications that stimulate economic growth and increase Canada’s international competitiveness. CAnet 4 is the fourth generation of Canada’s research and education network. CANARIE’s mission is to accelerate Canada’s advanced network development and use by facilitating the widespread adoption of faster, more efficient networks and by enabling the next generation of advanced products, applications and services to run on them. CANARIE is providing R&D funding for the ScienceStudio project. |
The CLS facility, operated by Canadian Light Source Inc., is a national science research laboratory for the production of high brightness synchrotron light from the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet to x-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum. CLS is a third-generation light source facility, established as Canada’s National Synchrotron Laboratory, and is accessible to researchers from the academic, government, and private sectors. The Canadian Light Source is contributing to the development of requirements, system design, implementation and deployment for ScienceStudio. |
Concordia University’s academic culture celebrates research, creativity, and the transfer of knowledge in many ways that ideal for today’s innovation driven society. Within this context, Concordia researchers are making important contributions toward understanding, adapting to, and shaping the social, cultural and technological transformations taking place worldwide. |
The VESPERS Group at the University of Western Ontario has scientists and graduate students engaged in basic and applied research projects involving the VESPERS beamline at CLS as well as surface science and microscopy techniques available at UWO. Assistance is also provided to new clients of the VESPERS beamline who wish to access it remotely through the Scitence Studio platform |
SHARCNET is a consortium of colleges and universities in a "cluster of clusters" of high performance computers, linked by advanced fibre optics. The SHARCNET community consists of 17 academic institutions in Ontario who are bound by an Institutional Operating Agreement, administered by The University of Western Ontario. The consortium brings together the strength of leading institutions, their cutting-edge research programs and highly qualified personnel to facilitate a collaborative environment that is unparalleled in Canada. SHARCNET is founded on an academic-industry partnership, which brings together these leading institutions with world-leading technology providers, to provide SHARCNET’s pool of outstanding researchers with extensive collaborative opportunities and access to leading-edge computational infrastructure. We aim to:
SHARCNET is contributing to the development of high performance computing applications for Science Studio and related facilities |
IBM Canada is a key contributor to the Canadian economy through significant R&D investment, job creation, use of Canadian suppliers and extensive participation in university research programs. IBM Canada is one of the country's largest R&D investors, contributing $334 million dollars (Cdn) in 2004. Our export revenue for the same year was $1.7 billion (Cdn). At year end 2004, IBM Canada and its wholly-owned subsidiaries employed some 20,000 regular full-time and part-time people across the country. IBM is contributing to the development of the system architecture for ScienceStudio. |
Architecture
The architecture is based on recent development in service oriented architectures. Figure 1 presents a conceptual overview of the system architecture that can be partitioned into the following constituent parts:
- User Interface - Users interact with the system through a web browser that acts as the user agent to the UI services component. The browser communicates with the UI Services either over the Internet or over User Configurable Light Paths (UCLP).
- The UI Services manage the user’s interaction with the system. The (web browser) clients interact with the UI services to obtain content, e.g. web pages and XML, and for servicing events from the user.
- The Application Service provides the mechanism to create, retrieve, and modify metadata relating to experiments such as projects, sessions, samples, etc. The metadata assists in organizing and automating, and improving the experiment process and data.
- The Data Base holds all experiment metadata and data. All metadata and data for a given Project or Session is provided to users in the form of a “zip archive” available directly from the User Interface. RBA system metadata, such as configuration data, is held in static xml files within each component.
- The service bus provides communication between services and components either within the system, or when integrating with external systems. Internal services are reusable services that other services can leverage such as user authentication and authorization, session management, system logging and database access. Current examples integrated external services are the UCLP reservation service and X-one data analysis package.
- The underlying beamline control and data acquisition system is implemented using EPICS based Input/Out Controllers (IOCs).
Figure 1: RBA Conceptual Architecture Overview Diagram
Critical technology choices made in the design include the use of J2EE, and the Spring Framework [2]. The relational database product being used is MS-SQL Server while the web-services are deployed on IBM Websphere for Linux. AJAX is used for communication between the web browser and the server. Java was selected as the programming language for the project.
Obtaining ScienceStudio
ScienceStudio is made available as open source to other interested institutions. For additional information contact Elder Matias
Publications and Presentations
McIntyre, N. S. et. al. “Science Studio”: Remote control of ‘big science’ facilities and data processing/data storage requirements. SSGC 2008.
Black, G. ScienceStudio Glossary. CLS Tech. Report.
Matias, E. Web Access to Beamlines the Canadian Experience and ScienceStudio EPICS Collaboration Meeting Knoxville TN, Oct. 13, 2007.
Matias, E. Next Generation of RBA – A Synchrotron Remote Access and Experiment Management Environment.. CANARIE Network Enabled Platforms Workshop. Ottawa ON, Jun. 26-27 2007.
Armstrong, C. CLS Remote Beamline Access Software. CLS Tech. Report. 7.4.1.1. Rev. 0.
Armstrong, C. CLS Remote Beamline Access System Design. CLS Tech. Report. 7.4.92.1. Rev. 0.
Acknowledgments
Major funding for this project was provided by CANARIE under the NEP-01 project. Earlier work on this system was provided under the CANAIRE IIP-14 project. This work was performed at the Canadian Light Source, with financial support from NSERC, NRC, CIHR, and the University of Saskatchewan.
Last modified: 2012-01-19 17:01:03