Speakers
Mr
Bartlomiej Pawlowski
(CERN)Mr
Nick Ziogas
(CERN)Mr
Wim Van Leersum
(Cern)
Description
CRA is a multi layered system with a web based front end providing centralized
management and rules enforcement in a complex, distributed computing environment such
as Cern. Much like an orchestra conductor CRA’s role is essential and multi
functional. Account management, resource usage and consistency controls for every
central computing service at Cern with about 75000 active accounts is one important
task of the system. Enforcement of the organization’s rules and regulations on the
usage of computing resources including strict security requirements in an environment
with an ever moving population and changing services is another challenge CRA has
addressed. In addition, the CRA application leverages its tight integration with
the personnel system, to provide extra functionality like name reservation and
dynamic email lists, allowing better coordination of the resources throughout the
Organization.
CRA’s lowest layer consists of an Oracle database for data storage and low level
integrity controls. A database abstraction layer is provided by a set of Java classes
and PL/SQL procedures. The interface for the end users has been implemented using
Java generating dynamic html, and is based on the MVC architecture. Here, the Apache
Java Struts framework provides most of the controller functionality while CRA actions
implement the organization’s business rules and logic. Asynchronous messaging is used
for communicating with the client systems.
