The SNS/HFIR Web Portal System for SANS

Abstract

The new generation of neutron scattering instruments being built are higher resolution and produce one or more orders of magnitude larger data than the previous generation of instruments. For instance, we have grown out of being able to perform some important tasks with our laptops. The data sizes are too big and the computational time would be too long. These large datasets can be problematic as facility users now begin to struggle with many of the same issues faced by more established computing communities. These issues include data access, management, and movement, data format standards, distributed computing, and collaboration with others. The Neutron Science Portal has been designed, and implemented to provide users with an easy-to-use interface for managing and processing data, while also keeping an eye on meeting modern computer security requirements that are currently being imposed on institutions. Users can browse or search for data which they are allowed to see, run data reduction and analysis applications, perform sample activation calculations and perform McStas simulations. Collaboration is facilitated by providing users a read/writeable common area, shared across all experiment team members. The portal currently has over 370 registered users; almost 7TB of experiment and user data, approximately 1,000,000 files cataloged, and had almost 10,000 unique visits last year. Future directions for enhancing portal robustness include examining how to mirror data and portal services, better facilitation of collaborations via virtual organizations, enhancing disconnected service via "thick client" applications, and better inter-facility connectivity to support cross-cutting research.