Domain-specific web services for scientific application developers

Abstract

Many scientists today routinely conduct simulations and run models using high performance computing (HPC) resources provided by national, regional and campus grid infrastructures, either directly logging into such resources or indirectly via web portals and other application client software, i.e. science gateways. Science gateways have proven to be an effective way of bringing HPC resources to a much larger user base. However, developing a new gateway demands substantial effort, requiring both cyberinfrastructure and domain expertise. This paper describes an approach by core software developers to provide domain specific web services (DomWS) to science gateway and application developers. The core developers deliver a set of web services that understand domain specific semantics and translate domain application requests into computational and other tasks that are dispatched onto the distributed high end resources. This approach allows gateway and application developers to easily create customized application services and focus on the gateway functions and interfaces, such as gadgets and desktop clients, that serve their user community. The DomWS approach is not a generic solution for all simulation services. Our aim is to help application developers apply this framework with ease to their specific models and simulations with a small degree of code modification. DomWS also provides reusable modules and templates for common tasks needed by the targeted user community. This paper describes a set of web services that have been developed for Community Climate System Model (CCSM) version 4 using this approach.