CrossGrid - Enabling New Possibilities in Grid Computing
Flood Forecasting Application
This demonstration will present the use of a web-based application portal for flood forecasting. A workflow (cascade) of simulation will be submitted for execution. The portal will be used to monitor the workflow service, starting jobs one after another according to the predefined dependencies, and executing them in the CrossGrid project testbed.
Subsequently, the results will be studied, including 2D and 3D visualisations. Finally, the use of the metadata catalogue to source a specific dataset among all the registered datasets will be explained.
High-Energy Physics Application
The HEP (interactivity) demonstration consists of two separate applications run from the CrossGrid Migrating Desktop (see below):
- Interactivity example: a histogramming application will be used to show some of the interactivity-related capabilities of the CrossGrid middleware. The programme is executed from the Migrating Desktop and presents a form enabling the user to input several HEP simulation parameters. Once these parameters are sent to the application, it calculates the distribution of results and generates a plotted histogram. The results are summarised, but the standard deviation of the distribution can be changed using a slider control.
- Interactive parallel ANN training: a HEP application used to train artificial neural networks (ANNs) with simulated events in order to distinguish interesting (signal) events - in this case, Higgs bosons - from background events. This application will be executed twice, at first using only two nodes and subsequently on 12 nodes. The purpose is to show the scalability of the application, reducing the waiting time for the physicist performing this kind of analysis from hours to minutes. This application also accepts (but does not require) human input during execution. As an example, the way ANN weights can be reset during training will be shown during the demonstration.
The Migrating Desktop
The Migrating Desktop (MD) is a framework graphical user interface for application management, Grid and job monitoring, and data and metadata management. It creates a transparent user work environment, regardless of the system version and hardware.
Through interaction with a dedicated Roaming Access Server, the MD includes an authentication mechanism as well as advanced Grid tools. The user front-end - a desktop similar to the ones used in Windows or Linux - is implemented as an advanced graphical Java-based application. Hence, it supports various operating systems while maintaining identical functionality. This graphical environment is used as an advanced client for accessing Grid resources in CrossGrid. The MD offers container and plugin Java templates which make it possible to implement Grid application front-ends in a short time.
During the GÉANT2 launch event the basic functionality of the Migrating Desktop, such as submission of jobs, monitoring, and data management, as well as launching interactive applications, will be presented.
