Education and Grid Services

Education and Grid Services

Geoffrey Fo

Professor of Computer Science, Informatics, Physics Pervasive Technology Laboratories

Indiana University Bloomington IN 47404

[email protected]

Who is Geoffrey Fox?

n Undergraduate degree in math, PhD Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University

n Theory, Experiment, Computation, Phenomenology of particle physics

Caltech for 20 years

• Worked with Feynman, Hey, Wolfram

n Dean for educational computing and associate provost for computing Caltech;

Professor of Physics; department chair

n Developed parallel computers for science

n Computer Science Syracuse, Florida State, Indiana

• Main area of research last 20 years

n Interdisciplinary work in computational science with many fields – Earth

Science/Biology at moment

n Chief technologist Anabas corporation (WebEx done right)

• Technology for distance education on the Grid

• Teaching class from Indiana to Jackson State this semester

n Informatics, Computer Science, Physics at Indiana

• Pervasive Technology Lab Information technology initiative at Indiana University funded by Lilly

What is a MLE Managed Learning Environment

n

An

MLE

is the full range of information systems and

processes of an institution that contributes directly or

indirectly to learning and the management of learning

A

Virtual Learning Environment VLE

is the subset of

MLE components that provide online learning

interactions for learners and teachers

n

MLE Components

include enrollment, security, portal,

digital library functions on learning resources, access to

administrative material, payment, attendance tracking,

authoring curriculum, learning planners, quizzes,

Some Players with Education Grid like Capabilities

n IMS and ADL in the USA have set standards for some of the

special learning metadata structures

n CHEF (Michigan) and Colloquia (Bangor) are academic

groupware projects aimed at education

• Access Grid from Argonne is Audio-Video conferencing

n Sakai and OKI are Mellon Foundation projects implementing

electronic learning capabilities

n Blackboard and WebCT are popular (some places) academic

e-learning support systems

• Several inhouse efforts like OnCourse at Indiana

n Docent, Topclass etc. are learning content management systems

LCMS mainly selling to corporate training market

n Centra, Interwise, Placeware, WebEx, GrooveNetworks are well

Grids in a Nutshell

n Grids are by definition the best of HPCC, Web Services, Agents,

Distributed Objects, Peer-to-peer networks, Collaborative environments

n Grid applications are typically zero or one very large

supercomputers, lots of conventional machines, with unlimited data and/or people supporting an electronic (virtual) community

• Data sources and people are latency tolerant …

• Multiple supercomputers (or clusters) on same Grid as in

TeraGrid/ETF largely for sharing of data and by people

n Grids are supported by Global Grid Forum, W3C, OASIS …

setting standards

n Grids are a “service oriented architecture” hiding irrelevant

details

• Services are electronic resources communicating by messages • Message based architecture gives scalable loosely coupled

Information/Knowledge Grids

n

Distributed

(10’s to 1000’s) of

data sources

(instruments,

file systems, curated databases …)

n

Data Deluge: 1 (now) to 100’s

petabytes/year (2012)

• Moore’s law for Sensors

n

Possible

filters

assigned dynamically (on-demand)

•

Run image processing algorithm on telescope image

•

Run Gene sequencing algorithm on compiled data

n

Needs

decision support

front end with “what-if”

simulations

n

Metadata

(provenance)

critical to annotate data

n

Integrate

across experiment

as in multi-wavelength

astronomy

A typical Web Service

n In principle, services can be in any language (Fortran .. Java ..

Perl .. Python) and the interfaces can be method calls, Java RMI Messages, CGI Web invocations, totally compiled away (inlining)

n The simplest implementations involve XML messages (SOAP) and

programs written in net friendly languages like Java and Python

Paymen Credit

Card

Warehous e

Shipping control WSDL

interfaces WSDL interfaces

Securit

y Catalog

Porta Service

Raw (HPC) Resources Middleware Database Portal Service s Syste Service s Syste Service s Syste Service s Application Servic Libraries Use Services “Core Grid

Typical Grid

Architecture

Service ApplicationService

Re-use

Re-use Applicatio Customization

Each service should b

Some Technical Issues

n

All IT approaches support systems with multiple

capabilities

• They often reveal and/or standardize interfaces

• They could be different method calls, Java classes, or

Web/Grid service interfaces

n

We will ONLY use the word

Service

when interface can

be efficiently accessed by messages with service as an

isolated single service

• Grids build systems from message-based services

Module A Module

B

Method Call 1 to 10 microseconds

Service A Service

B Message_s

10 to 1000 millisecond latency

Message-based or Method-based

n

Method-based

interfaces are most efficient but can only

be run in that fashion in a single

monolithic

implementation

•

One service

with

multiple ports

•

i.e. each interface might be accessed via message but

all capabilities need to be

co-located

•

Technologies like

Java RMI

allow distributed objects

but requires serialization (often non trivial) and

unclear if application supports performance loss

“Message-based services” support standards and

Sakai

n The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford,

and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools.

n Sakai builds on OKI – Open Knowledge Initiative – interfaces

n These Open Service Interface Definitions were developed

outside the Grid process but appear to have overlaps with many Web service and Grid standards

• Note OGSA-DAI, Security, Workflow, WS-Notification,

Grid monitoring, WebDAV overlaps

n Although they are called “services”, I think they are being

developed initially inside a (single) Java container

Portals

• A general term for the whole user experience with an interface to multiple capabilities

• Narrow specification of certain capabilities such as customization, server side support for web page generation, aggregation of document fragments (one per service), security

• Broad specification to include both user interface and services

n Note portals tend to be monolithic frameworks because that’s

how one used to build such things

• Jetspeed and CHEF’s modification of it are both frameworks

n Portals need to be broken up into distributed message based

services for security, customization, layout, rendering

• Shouldn’t invest too much in today’s frameworks although they have

some wonderful features

n However Portals do encourage “component” model for user

interfaces and so this fits service model so every service can be packaged with its (document fragment) user interface

OGCE

Consortiu m

The OGCE Computing Grid Portal

• Provides Portlets for

– Management of user proxy certificates

– Remote file Management via Grid FTP

– News/Message systems

• for collaborations

– Grid Event/Logging service – Access to OGSA services – Access to directory services – Specialized Application

Factory access

• Distributed applications

• Workflow

– Access to Metadata Index tools

• User searchable index

– Real Time

Collaboration

OGCE

Consortiu m

Example Capability: File Management

•

Grid FTP portlet– Allow

User to manage remote

file spaces

–

Uses stored proxy for

authentication

–

Upload and download files

–

Third party file transfer

• Request that GridFTP server A send a file to GridFTP server B

• Does not involve traffic through portal server Portal Server User GridFT P Server A GridFT P Server B GridFT Service 1 of many

Education Grids

n

Education Grids

can be considered from at least

two

points of view

n

1)

Exploiting e-Science and other relevant research

government or business grids whose resources can be

adapted for use in education

• Opportunity to make education more “real” and to give

students an idea what scientific research is like

n

2)

Support the virtual organization that is the teacher

and learner community

• Actually this community is heterogeneous with teachers,

learners, parents, employers, publishers, informal education, university staff ….

Education Grid

Inservice Teachers Preservice Teachers School of Education

Teacher Educator Grids Informal Education (Museum) Grid Student/Parent … Community Grid Science Grids Bioinformatics Earth Science …….

Typical Science Gri Service such as Research

Database or simulation Transformed by Grid Filte to form suitable for education

Planning Grid Learning

Management or LMS Grid

Publisher Grid Campus o Enterprise Administrative Grid

Education as a Grid of Grids

Digital Library

Education Grid of Grids

n

Services in an Education Grid

fall into three classes

1) Those that

special to Education

such as

quiz

(as in

IMS), learning plan or grading services

n

2) Those that are important but can be

taken from

other Grids

such as collaboration and security

n

3) Those that come from other Grids and are

refactored for education

• The simulation is reduced in size

• The bioinformatics database interface is simplified

e-Science

Resource Filter Education Grid Viewof e-Science Resource

Database Database

Researc Simulation

s _{Analysis and}

Visualizatio Portal Repositorie Federated Databases Data Filte Services

Field Trip Data

Streaming Data Sensor s

?

XGSP Web Service MCU Architecture

SIP H323 Access_Grid Native_XGSP

Admire

Gateways convert to uniform XGSP Messaging

High Performance (RTP and XML/SOAP and ..

Media Servers

Filters Session Server

XGSP-based Control

NaradaBrokerin g

All Messaging

Use Multiple Media servers to scale to many codecs and many versions of audio/video mixing

NB Scales a distributed

We Services

Requirements or Issues to be Addressed I

•

Interoperability:

Several standards – e.g. H323,

T120, SIP, Access Grid – which are inconsistent with

themselves and with modern Web standards

•

Integration:

Integrate all forms of collaboration –

instant messenger, audio-video conferencing,

application sharing

•

Life-cycle costs:

use commodity software

components

•

Extensibility:

Interfaces defined for adding new

capabilities

•

Legacy:

Support existing relevant infrastructure

Requirements or Issues to be Addressed II

•

Performance:

Allow maximum performance with

given network with no unnecessary client or server

overheads

•

Fault Tolerance:

Fault tolerant session control

•

Security:

Support multiple levels of security for

clients, servers and communication traffic

•

Scalability:

Current systems are often limited by

architecture or implementation (such as a single

server) in number of simultaneous participants

•

Pervasive Access:

Need to support wide range of

clients from hand-held devices to sophisticated

desktop system.

•

Ease of Use:

Simple web portal interface; no special

hardware

Collaboration Architecture

• Use Grid and Web Service base architecture

• Define XML-based Collaboration Interface specification capturing semantics of existing standards

• Define open interfaces allowing both third party services to be developed and to allow competitive implementation of base infrastructure

• Use software overlay network to support needed dynamic routing and message-based architecture

• Use active measurements to find network performance and network or server/broker faults

• Use Web Service message based security

• Use publish/subscribe paradigm for all messaging to support multi-participant sessions and archiving

• Use distributed scalable fault-tolerant middleware including WS-RM (Web Service Reliable Messaging) or equivalent

• Web Service architecture with N logN servers to support N participants

• 1000 simultaneous streams needs around 50 low-end Linux servers

• Does not need multi-cast; supports web-cams

Summary

n Grids are inevitably important for Education

n Grid of Grids interesting way to build “new Grids” that might be

accepted by skeptical participants and enhance re-use

n IMS has set data but not many service standards

• Partial step to interoperability

n Sakai is building modern (probably wonderful) open e-learning

capabilities but appears not to be a Grid/WS standards compliant service architecture

n Current academic/commercial systems are successful but

monolithic and perhaps are too education-specific

n Opportunity to build service-based Education Grid

Infrastructure interacting with broad community (from Grids to WS to Schools of Education) exploiting other Grids

n Can build collaboration – A/V Conferencing, Shared applications,

groupware – in Grid/WS architecture

n Can develop best practice and tools to allow e-Science grids to be

linked to education