Speaker
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
This activity is focused on the possibility to make interoperable
two communities, the Grid and VObs. One of the key
issues is to identify a common authentication and authorization
mechanism that allows DCs and Astronomers
through the DCs to access grid resources. The usage of Grid
services via the DCs does not represent in our opinion a
challenging task.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
Astronomical applications are both computational and data
intensive. Astronomical data is mainly structured in
database systems. The VObs is a “grid” of databases devoid of
computational resources. The Euro-VO Data Center
Alliance organizes the activities necessary to allow VObs users
to exploit (through the data centres involved in the
project) the processing capabilities offered by the computational
Grid and in particular by EGEE. This activity will
involve a part of the Astronomical community in the Grid
computing. Moreover, DCs have a number of
computational needs related to data reduction and analysis
activity. The theoretical data, produced by numerical
simulations, is also available in the VObs. Theoretical data
post-pressing is in charge of the theoretical DCs and the
EGEE grid may be a useful computational resource. Finally, the
Grid may be used as a collaboration tool to share
data and exchange experiences through DCs.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
We plan to explore the use of the Grid for DCs through two use
cases well representative of the typical needs of a
DC. A data reduction use case: a DC gets data from archive using
standard VObs protocols (DAL), puts the data on a
file space, processes data on the EGEE, saves the output to file
space and finally gets output for the user, eventually
redirecting them to a visualization tool. We identify two
possible data processing activities, one involves catalogues
and cross matching tools and a second one involves imaging using
Sextractor. The second use case is based on
BaSTI.It is a database of stellar evolution models for a large
range of masses and chemical compositions. It is
created using a stellar evolution code FRANEC that requires long
computational time to produce a model.To produce
on demand models and to make them available to the VObs users it
is necessary to make interoperable VObs and
Grid.The EGEE services used will be the workload system and the
file catalogue
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
The Virtual Observatory(VObs)is a world-wide effort of the
astronomical community to enable the international
utilization of astronomical archives structured in Databases as
an integrated and interoperating resource:it is a
knowledge Grid.The Euro-VO Data Center Alliance aims at
coordinating and assisting European Data Centres to take
up VO standards.It collects all the DCs of Europe.One of the
activities of this project is the coordination between
the VObs and the Grid systems.
