MyOSG

Abstract

The Open Science Grid (OSG) is made up of researchers from several scientific domains that contribute hardware and software resources through Virtual Organizations (VOs). These VOs have developed a plethora of tools that have been found useful to members of the OSG. Unfortunately it is hard for everyone in the OSG community to keep up with all the tools, and their accessibility; Similarly OSG support staff and resource administrators have been known to have a hard time debugging an issue related to a reported issue because of the distributed nature of various tools; Additionally, new collaborators have repeatedly complained that most of the tools on the OSG are hard to discover; and even after they discover a tool, the interface is not uniform, and requires them to learn a new interface and its data format. MyOSG addresses these concerns: The primary idea is to use an authoritative source of information about OSG entities as a backbone, and organize data from different tools around this backbone to create a web portal. Further, MyOSG provides the ability for users to export / subscribe to a variety of information in formats such as XML, UWA -- an industry standard widget format, iCal -- for calendar type information, and others. This enables a user to construct Individual Information Centers (IIC) on tools such as iGoogle, Netvibes, Opera Widgets, and on mobile devices such as iPhone, etc. In summary, MyOSG is a highly customizable web portal that allows vastly different categories of users to access information they find important to their role in a format that is convenient to them.