Canadian eScience Workshop

Monday, November 21 (full day) and Tuesday, November 22 (morning)
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

There are several ongoing initiatives both within the synchrotrons and the wider scientific community to develop eScience system permitting remote access to national and international scientific facilities. This workshop will examine recent eScience initiatives being undertaken to provide remote access to synchrotrons and other similar national facilities as well as the use of grid computing to support the programs hosted at these facilities. Use of Software Oriented Architecture (SOA), the CA4Net, and Websphere will be emphasized.

The structure of the meeting will consist of both presentations on recent developments and plans for e-Science systems as well as round table discussions.

To register for the meeting please complete our online registration: Please note there is no registration fee for this workshop, however you must register in order to attend.

The CLS Annual Users’ Meeting will be held prior to this workshop, November 18-20, 2005. Information on the CLS User's Meeting can be obtained at: http://www.lightsource.ca/uac/meeting2005/. Please note that registration for the Annual Users’ Meeting is independent of registration for the eScience Workshop.

Other Information:

Air service to Saskatoon International (Airport code YXE) is provided by Air Canada, Westjet and Northwest Airlines. Travel information to the CLS can be found at:http://www.lightsource.ca/uso/travel.php

Information on hotel accommodation and discounted rates can be found at: http://www.lightsource.ca/uac/meeting2005/accommodations.php. Please note that the discounted rates are held until October 15.

Agenda

The workshop will be held in the VIDO Auditorium.  The following link provides a map that identifies the location of VIDO on campus.  You will need to sign-in at the reception and you will then be directed down to the conference area. http://www.usask.ca/maps/vido_lab.html  

If you are driving there is very limited visitor parking around VIDO.  The following link identifies public parking on campus.  Lots 4 and Lot 5 (underground in Agriculture building) are the nearest public pay lots.  If you are from out of town you may find the taxi services more convenient. http://www.usask.ca/maps/uofsmap4c.pdf

For those of you from out of town, please keep in mind that this time of year, it is normally hovering around freezing. Weather information on Saskatoon can also be found at: http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/sk-40_metric_e.html

Date: Monday, November 21 (full day) and Tuesday, November 22 (morning)
Location: VIDO – Auditorium
120 Veterinary Road
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK

Time	Title	Speaker/Affiliation
Monday, November 21, 2005
08:30	Welcome and Overview	E. Matias CLS
Web Services and Grid Services
08:45	Status of Grid Computing	Darcy Quesnel CANARIE
09:00	The Role of GridCanada in Canadian eScience.	Roger Impey, NRC
09:40	Performance, Fault-Management and SOA	Ralph Deters, University of Saskatchewan
10:20	Coffee Break
10:35	NEPTUNE and VENUS Project	Robert Heuchert, IBM
11:15	A Grid-enabled cyber-infrastructure for scientific computing	Thanh N. Truong, University of Utah
11:55	Lunch (Sponsored by and )
Remote eScience Applications
13:00	Network Attached Instruments	Donald(Rick) McMullen Indiana University
13:40	Remote Access Experiments at SSRL	Aina Cohen, SSRL
14:20	SSRL Demo
14:40	Coffee Break
15:00	Remote X-ray Microscopy	Stephen Urquhart University of Saskatchewan
15:20	Roundtable Discussion
16:20	Adjournment
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
08:30	SpectroGrid: A System for Distributed Spectroscopy	Andre Charbonneau, NRC
09:10	A Beamline on your Desktop	Stuart Lomas, BigBangwidth Ernst Bergman
09:55	Coffee Break
10:10	The VESPERS-CANARIE Project: Remote Operation Of A Microprobe Beamline	Stuart McIntyre, University of Western Ontario
11:00	Remote Access to Vespers and PX Beamlines at the CLS.	Elder Matias , CLS
11:20	Roundtable Discussion
12:20	Adjournment

 

ABSTRACTS

The Role of GridCanada in Canadian eScience.

Roger Impey, NRC

GridCanada (www.gridcanada.ca) offers various services to the the Canadian eScience community. This talk will go over these services, and give examples on how they are being currently used.

Performance, Fault-Management and SOA

Ralph Deters, University of Saskatchewan

The presentation will start with an overview of the key concepts and underlying technologies in SOA and then continue with a brief discussion on the process of moving from a normal distributed system towards one that embraces the core ideas of SOA.

This will be followed by a review of the performance and fault management issues in the SOA deployments and a discussion on how to overcome them. Special emphasis will be given to the use of scheduling and caching as means for improving performance and the use of models in the fault-management.

The NEPTUNE and VENUS Project

Robert Heuchert, IBM

The NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS projects represent a total of $70M to establish innovative, regional, cabled observatory systems with several sub-sea scientific observatories in the deep sea off the BC coast. The endeavour is part of the $300M bi-national NEPTUNE project, in which US partners include the University of Washington, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. The Canadian contribution to the project is made possible by funding from Canadian Foundation for Innovation and BC Knowledge Development Funds. The University of Victoria hosts the two projects. The goal is to utilize the recent advancements in fibre optic communication technology to enable scientists on shore to probe the mysteries of the ocean, and allow the world to share in the incredible discoveries. The development of powered, fibre-optic cabled observatories covering a wide range of marine environments will allow, for the first time, real-time observations that will establish a comprehensive interactive database and decadal time-series. Details of the NEPTUNE project can be found on the websites: http://www.neptunecanada.ca/ and http://www.neptune.washington.edu/. Venus is present under http://www.venus.uvic.ca/.

With the help of CANARIE, the national high-speed network organization, and in the framework of this organization's Intelligent Infrastructure Program (IIP), NEPTUNE Canada intends to provide its Data Management and Archiving System (DMAS) with an advanced Service-Oriented Architecture that will provide:

• Through the use of web services that will implement the communication with them, instruments will be integrated into the overall observatory cyber-infrastructure

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed technologies will be deployed to deliver to event information to subscribers (scientists or processes)

• Workflow orchestration tools will be made available to facilitate the elaboration of user-driven, complex, scientific analysis applications that will be executed on grid compute resources

A Grid-enabled cyber-infrastructure for scientific computing

Thanh N. Truong, University of Utah

With the expansion of the Internet and World-Wide-Web (or the Web), research environments have changed dramatically. As a result, the need to be able to efficiently and securely access information and resources from remote computer systems is becoming even more critical. In this presentation, I will describe the development of an extendable integrated Grid enabled web-based simulation environment for computational science and engineering, called Computational Science and Engineering Online (CSE-Online, http://cse-online.net). CSE-Online is based on a unique client-server software architecture that can distribute the workload between the client and server computers in such a way as to minimize the communication between the client and server thus making the environment less sensitive to the network instability. Furthermore, the new software architecture allows the user to access data and resources on one or more remote servers as well as the computing grid while having the full capability of the web-services collaborative environment. It can be accessed anytime and anywhere from a web-browser connected to the network by either a wired or wireless connection. It has different modes of operations to support different working environments and styles. CSE-Online is evolving into a middleware that can provide a framework for accessing and managing remote data and resources including the computing grid for any domain, not necessarily within computational science and engineering.

Network Attached Instruments

Donald(Rick) McMullen, Indiana University

As network attached instruments and sensors become available new opportunities for expanding their accessibility, usefulness and throughput present themselves. A key to integration of instruments into grids is a standard methodology for developing interfaces that existing and future instruments can provide and data acquisition and reduction applications can rely on. In this talk I will present an overview of the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA), a Web Services based approach to making instruments and sensors network accessible in a standards-based, uniform way, and for interacting remotely with instruments and the data they produce. We also examine the application of CIMA to remote access to X-ray crystallography diffractometers in university lab and synchrotron settings, and the integration of instruments with data management and user access through science portals.

Remote Access Experiments at SSRL

Aina Cohen, SSRL

Since June 2005, the macromolecular crystallography users of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) have had the option to conduct diffraction experiments from their home institutions and other remote locations by means of advanced software tools that enable network-based control of highly automated beam lines. Remote experimenters have access to the same tools as local users, and have the capability to mount, center, and screen crystalline samples, and to collect, analyze, and backup diffraction data. Automated sample mounting is accomplished with the Stanford Auto-Mounting System (SAM), beamline and experimental control is carried out using Blu-Ice/DCS, and additional remote monitoring of the experiment and data backup is supported with several web-based applications. The highly graphical applications and computational resources at SSRL are accessed through a client/server application that uses minimal resources on the client side and has a typical response close to that obtained at the beamline.

This remote capability is now available on beamlines 1-5, 9-1, 9-2, 11-1, and 11-3, and starting in 2006, 7-1. To date, 20 research groups are using the remote access tools routinely, some as far away as Australia and New Zealand. For prefrozen samples the new technologies implemented at SSRL will eliminate the distinction between remote and local access to synchrotron resources.

Remote X-ray Microscopy

Stephen Urquhart University of Saskatchewan

The current use of remote experiment in x-ray microscopy, focusing more on the specific scientific and collaborative benefits of this activity rather than the technology.

SpectroGrid: A System for Distributed Spectroscopy

Andre Charbonneau, NRC

Grid Computing supports sharing of distributed resources across boundaries and authorization domains, and can help scientists by providing secure, transparent and easy access to computing resources. We have designed and developed SpectroGrid; a system offering grid based services for accessing, visualizing, and reliably manipulating remote spectrometry instruments, allowing scientists to concentrate on performing experiments and data analysis, without having to become experts in the software technologies enabling these activities. Using SpectroGrid as an example, this short presentation will show the audience how Grid components, combined with various open-source technologies, can be used to implement systems that help researchers work with scientific instrumentation.

A Beamline on your Desktop

Stuart Lomas, BigBangwidth Ernst Bergman

Most synchrotron users currently travel to the facility to access their preferred beamline. Beamline time is scheduled in units of days, experiment turnaround takes many weeks, and facility time is wasted while researchers at the site examine their intermediate results and determine what to do next. A new project led by the CLS and funded by CANARIE, BigBangwidth and IBM aims to improve beamline usage, speedup experiment turnaround, and reduce the need for researchers to travel. This presentation explains the networking component of the project, with CANARIE lightpaths and BigBangwidth Lightpath Accelerator bringing the beamline to the user's desktop.

The VESPERS-CANARIE Project: Remote Operation Of A Microprobe Beamline

Stuart McIntyre, University of Western Ontario

VESPERS (Very sensitive Elemental and Structural Probe Employing Radiation from a Synchrotron) is a hard x ray beamline that is in the detailed design phase at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). In order to make its future capabilities useful to the largest number of academic and industrial scientists, a plan has been established to link it to external users via a web based system over the CANARIE network. The software to be designed will allow either real time access to beamline controls or (more usually) the scheduling of a series of experiments that will be carried out automatically on specimen areas pre-selected by the external experimentalist. Software development and software/hardware interfacing will make use of a mock end station at CLS to be assembled in early 2006.

Remote Access to Vespers and PX Beamlines at the CLS.

Elder Matias , CLS

This presentation discusses the current design of the beamline control systems and the modifications and extensions that will be needed to provide remote access. The CLS remote access project is a CANARIE funded project to develop this functionality by end December 2006.

Last modified: 2009-09-15 16:09:57