4th EGEE User Forum/OGF 25 and OGF Europe's 2nd International Event

Lightweight Java API and command-line interface for gLite

3 Mar 2009, 16:30

5m

Foyer (Le Ciminiere, Catania, Sicily, Italy)

Poster Programming environments Poster session

Speaker

Dr Oleg Sukhoroslov (ISA RAS, Russia)

Description

jLite is a Java library providing simple API for accessing a gLite based grid infrastructure. It is lightweight, easy to install and supports any Java-capable platform. The API provides functionality similar to gLite User Interface commands and can be used for development of grid-enabled Java applications, cross-platform tools, grid portals and services. A command-line interface based on jLite enables grid users to submit jobs directly from their desktop machines.

Keywords

gLite, Java, API, Application Development, Job Submission, Command-line Interface

Conclusions and Future Work

The beta version of jLite is released under Apache License 2.0 and being tested in several grid applications. Further development of jLite will be done in accordance with feedback and feature requests from users. Among the proposed future work are support for complex job types, information service queries and data management operations.

Impact

jLite is intended for Java developers who struggle with gLite middleware and want to reduce time and effort needed to build a grid application. By providing an easy-to-use and portable API jLite simplifies development of cross-platform grid applications on top of the EGEE grid infrastructure. In contrast to Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA), which is an effort to define standard middleware-independent APIs, jLite focuses on one middleware platform and one programming language. jLite also includes a command-line interface which can be used as a simple cross-platform alternative to gLite User Interface (UI) on Windows and other operating systems. This complements current efforts to port gLite UI on platforms different from Scientific Linux and enables grid users to submit jobs directly from their desktop machines.

Detailed analysis

Existing Java APIs for gLite are scattered among several packages and expose mostly low-level service operations. Available API usage examples often imply the presence of gLite User Interface environment installed on Scientific Linux. This complicates the use of these APIs for development of cross-platform grid applications. jLite is addressing these problems by providing a high-level Java API with functionality similar to gLite shell commands. Current implementation supports complete gLite job management lifecycle including VOMS proxy creation and delegation, transfer of job input files, job submission (only normal jobs are supported now), job status monitoring and download of job output files. The API hides complexity of underlying middleware and its configuration. jLite is easy to install because it includes all external dependencies and does not require installation of gLite User Interface. The library is pure Java and can be used on any Java-capable platform including Windows.

URL for further information

http://jlite.googlecode.com/