VRE Definition And Creation

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D4Science

VRE Definition and Creation

D4Science VRE ManagementTraining Event30th April 2009Rome (Italy)

www.d4science.eu

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www.d4science.euD4Science VRE Management TrainingRoma (Italy), 30th April 2009

Outline

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Infrastructure Resources

A gCube-based infrastructure manages:

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Infrastructure Resources: gHN

The gCube Hosting Node :

Is the runtime container of gCube services

Provides access to local hardware resources, Storage systems, instruments, CPU cycles

Grants lifetime management

Mediates service2service interactionsroute requests to target serviceenforce security and scope policies

Detailed information on how to install a gHN is available on the wiki site accessible here.

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Infrastructure Resources: gCube Service

A gCube Service is a software packaged as Service Archive (SA). These SAs:Follow a predefined structureGroup inter-connected packagesDeclare dependencies to other packages

Detailed information on the Service Archive Specification is available on the wiki site accessible here.

All SAs are stored in a common repository, the gCube Software Repository. The storage of any gCube SA in this repository is subject to a certification process.

A gCube infrastructure only runs certified service.

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Infrastructure Resources: gCube VO Services

• gCube VO Services run in a VO scope and are exploited by all VREs of that VO

Can they be shared across VOs?

Can we have multiple instances in the same VO?

Can they be restarted without manual staging?

Content Management Storage Management, Collection Management

NO NO YES

Metadata Broker YES YES YESMetadata Manager NO YES YESXML Indexer NO YES YESIndexes (ForwardIndexes, FullTextIndexes, GeoIndexes)

NO YES NO (1.1.7)YES (1.2.0)

Personalisation (ProfileAdministration, UserProfileAccess):

YES YES YES

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Infrastructure Resources: gCube VRE Services

• gCube VRE Services run in a VRE scope and are exploited by that VRE only (1.1.7).

• gCube VRE Services (1.3.0) will remove this limitation as reported in the following table

Can we share a RI across VREs?

Can they be restarted without manual staging?

Search Master NO YESSearch Operators YES YESGoogle Service YES YESDIR YES YESAnnotation YES YESThumbnailer YES YES

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Virtual Organization (VO)

A Virtual Organization (VO) models sets of users and resources belonging to a e-Infrastructure.

It defines :What is sharedWho is allowed to shareThe conditions under which sharing occurs

VOs may have a limited lifetime may span multiple actual organizations

VO

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VRE 2

Virtual Research Environment (VRE)

A Virtual Research Environment (VRE) provides a framework of applications, services and data sources dynamically identified to support the processes of research/collaboration/cooperation.

The purpose of a VRE is to help selected VO members to carry out cooperative activities like data analysis and processing, and to produce new knowledge using specialized tools.

VRE 1

VO

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VRE Definition

The VRE Definition is the operation performed by a VRE Designer to request the creation of a new VRE

• It does not allocate any resource to the new VRE

• It does not compromise the other VREs

• It does not produce any tangible effect until approval

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VRE Definition Steps

1. VRE Information Definition (Name, Description, Lifetime)

2. VRE Content Definition a. Selection of the collectionsb. Selection of the descriptive metadata formats

3. VRE Functionality Definitiona. Selection of access functions: textual search, geographic

search, quick search, google search, search by query expression

b. Selection of content functions: annotation, report template definition, report definition, course management (1.2.0), thumbnail, metadata editing (1.2.0)

4. VRE Verification

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VRE Definition Steps (1)

1. VRE Information Definition (Name, Description, Lifetime)

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VRE Definition Steps (2a)

2. VRE Content Definitiona. Selection of the collections

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VRE Definition Steps (2b)

2. VRE Content Definitionb. Selection of the descriptive metadata formats

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VRE Definition Steps (3a)

3. VRE Functionality Definitiona. Selection of access functions

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VRE Definition Steps (3b)

3. VRE Functionality Definitionb. Selection of content functions

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VRE Design Steps (4)

4. VRE Verification

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VRE Approval

The VRE Approval is the operation performed by a VRE Manager to create a new VRE

• It must allocate at least 2 gHNs to the new VRE

• It can temporarily compromise the other VREs

• It produces the environment

• It is not the last step

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VRE Approval Steps

1. VRE Validation

2. gHNs Selection2 gHNs at leastVRE Manager service will be deployed on

Either on the same site where the VRE Manager of the VO is runningOr on the first selected node

VRE services (identified through the selected functionality) will be deployed on the remaining selected gHNs

3. VRE Creation

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VRE Approval Steps (1)

1. VRE Validation

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VRE Approval Steps (2)

2. gHNs Selection

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VRE Approval Steps

3. VRE Creation

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VRE Deployment

The VRE Deployment is the operation activated by the VRE Manager and operated by the system to deploy the VRE Manager and VRE services on the selected gHNs.

A Deployment Report is generated to report the result of the deployment.

Detailed information on how to analyze and interpret the information reported in the Deployment Report is available on the wiki site accessible here.

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VRE Management

The VRE Management is the last mandatory activity.

It allows to define the:1. VRE layout2. VRE Information Space

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1. VRE layout

The VRE layout defines how the portlets are displayed by the portal. Each portlet gives access to a functionality selected by the VRE Designer.

The VRE layout is persisted as generic resource in the Information System and can be edited using the ‘Layout Editor’ portlet

Available only for users either with ‘VRE-Manager’ or ‘VO-Admin’role

VRE Management (1)6

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Layout Editor Portlet6

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2. VRE Information Space

Describe the available collections, their hierarchy, and their descriptive information (description, references, etc.)

It is used by the portal to group collections and retrieve extra information for each available collection

The Information Space Editor portlet is available for editing this resource

It is available only to users either with ‘VRE-Manager’ or ‘VO-Admin’ role

VRE Management (2)6

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Information Space Editor Portlet6

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Information Space Editor Portlet

The first column shows all the available collections for this VRE

The collections that are highlighted with blue color are the ones that already exist on this VRE

The second column shows the hierarchical structure of the collections.

New collections can be added to groupsExisting collections can be removedExisting collections can be moved to different groups (drag and drop to move collections to other groups)

The third column shows details for the selected collectionThese information are editable

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VRE Personalization

The VRE personalization can be done manipulating the VREGeneric Resources:

MetadataSchemaInfo Generic ResourcePresentation XSLTs Generic ResourcesMetadata XSLTs Generic Resources

Used for functional and presentation reasons these generic resources are inherited by the VO

Generic resources can be registered and updated using the ‘GenericResource’ portlet that is available only to users either with ‘VRE-Manager’ or ‘VO-Admin’ role

Detailed information on the VRE Generic Resources is available on the wiki site accessible here.

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MetadataSchemaInfo Generic Resource

MetadataSchemaInfo is the generic resource that defines for each available metadata schema:

the searchable fields that portal users can search in, the fields that can be used to sort the result obtained executing a query

The fields declared as “searchable” should be part of the corresponding metadata XML schema

Detailed information on the MetadataSchemaInfo is available on the wiki site accessible here.

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Format of MetadataSchemaInfo

Format<schemaName>

<option><option-name>displayed name in search fields at portal</option-name><option-value>actual xml-element name in metadata</option-value><option-type>fielded</option-type><option-sort>XPath expression to be used for sort</option-sort>

</option>...

</schemaName>

If a searchable field is not needed to be used for sorting the <option-sort> element must not have a value

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Presentation XSLTs Generic Resources

The portal uses XSLTs which are applied per different schema when either a combined, simple, or browse search is performed

In order for the portal to work properly, a ‘default’ xslt for each available metadata schema is required

Except the ‘default’ xslts, other xslts can be added to personalize the environment

Users can select which xslt they want to use per schema by using the UserProfile portlet

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Presentation XSLTs Generic Resources

Each presentation xslt should follow a name pattern so that it will be correctly parsed by the portal

Name pattern: PresentationXSLT_SchemaName_XSLTNameWhere SchemaName is the name of the metadata schema for which this xslt will be applied and XSLTName is a name of your choice except the ‘default’ that cannot be used

The body of these resources should be the desired XSLT

These XSLTs are applied to the result of a search producing the HTML representation of the results.

Detailed information on the PresentationXSLT is available on thewiki site accessible here.

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Presentation XSLT - HOW to create it

A presentation XSLT transforms result metadata objects to their corresponding HTML representations, which are then rendered by the results portlet.

Normally, such a XSLT produces a HTML table with two columns.

The first column contains the names of the fields which must be included in the rendered resultsThe second column contains the values of these fields

The XSLT should check if each field is present in the results before adding a row to the output table.

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Presentation XSLT - Example

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"><xsl:output encoding="UTF-8" method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/><xsl:template match="/”>

<table><xsl:if test="//*[local-name()='title']”>

<tr><td align="right" class="window-title-inactive" width="120">

<b>Title:</b></td><td>

<xsl:value-of select="//*[local-name()='title']"/></td>

</tr></xsl:if>…..…..…..

</table></xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Check if the “title”field is present and add a row in the output table. Put the field name in the first cell and the field value in the second cell.

Do the same for every other field, adding more rows

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Metadata XSLTs Generic Resources

For presenting the metadata of a result object the portal uses XSLTs which are applied per different schema.

In order for the portal to work properly, a ‘default’ xslt for each available metadata schema is required

Except the ‘default’ xslts, other xslts can be added to personalize the environment

Users can select which xslt they want to use per schema by using the UserProfile portlet

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Metadata XSLTs Generic Resources

Each presentation xslt follows a name pattern so that it will becorrectly parsed by the portal

Name pattern: MetadataXSLT_SchemaName_XSLTNameWhere SchemaName is the name of the metadata schema for which this xslt will be applied and XSLTName is a name of your choice except the ‘default’ that should always be used

The body of these resources contains the desired XSLT

These XSLTs are applied to the metadata of a result object producing the HTML representation of the metadata

Detailed information on the MetadataXSLT is available on the wiki site accessible here.

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Metadata XSLT - HOW to create it

A metadataXSLT transforms the metadata of a result object to their corresponding HTML representations, which are then rendered by the metadata portlet.

Normally, such a XSLT produces a HTML table which have as a header the name of each metadata field and as rows the values of the corresponding field

The XSLT should check if each field is present in the results before adding a row to the output table

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Metadata XSLT - Example

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"><xsl:output encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" method="html" version="1.0"/><xsl:template match="/”><table border="1" style="border-collapse: collapse;" width="60%"><xsl:if test="//*[local-name()='publisher']">

<th align="left" class="diligent-header">Publisher</th><xsl:for-each select="//*[local-name()='publisher']”>

<tr><td>

<xsl:value-of select="self::node()"/></td>

</tr></xsl:for-each>

</xsl:if>…..…..

</table></xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Check if the “publisher” field is present and add a header in the output table. For all “publisher”values add them as rows

Do the same for every other field, adding more rows

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Support for personalization

A new portlet will be available soon (1.2.0). This new portlet will provide an easy and graphical way for creating all required generic resources.

Using this portlet it won’t be needed to learn the syntax of XSLT

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Technology

VRE Definition And Creation