Hi Guys,

Looks great and sounds very complimentary to OODT. Happy that you guys mention 
alignment -- might be nice to expose data from an OODT file management+workflow 
management+resource management system as a Airavata gateway. Just a quick 
thought after skimming the proposal.

Good stuff!

Cheers,
Chris

On Apr 23, 2011, at 2:53 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:

> I would like to propose Airavata for entry into the Apache Incubator.
>
> The full proposal can be found at [1] and is copied at the end of this
> mail. For those in a hurry here's a quick summary:
>
> Airavata is a software toolkit currently used to build science gateways
> but that has a much wider potential use. It provides features to
> compose, manage, execute, and monitor large scale applications and
> workflows on computational resources ranging from local clusters to
> national grids and computing clouds. Users can use Airavata back end
> services and build gadgets to deploy in open social containers such as
> Apache Rave and modify them to suite their needs. Airavata builds on
> general concepts of service oriented computing, distributed messaging,
> and workflow composition and orchestration.
>
> Airavata will provide web interfaces and scalable Service Oriented
> Architecture based backend services to build or enhance Science Gateway
> (see https://www.teragrid.org/web/science-gateways/) and similar
> environments. Airavata will specifically focus on:
>
> 1.  sophisticated server-side tools for registering and managing large
> scale applications on computational resources.
>
> 2.  graphical user interfaces to construct, execute, control, manage and
> reuse of scientific workflows.
>
> 3.  interfacing and interoperability with with various external (third
> party) data and provenance management tools
>
> The project team consists of a number of existing Apache Committers and
> the code comes from the same stable as some of the code donated to
> Apache Rave (Incubating).
>
> We welcome your questions, suggestions, observations and support.
>
> Ross
>
> [1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/AiravataProposal
>
> FULL PROPOSAL TEXT
> ==================
>
> = Airavata Proposal for Apache Incubator =
>
> == Abstract ==
> Airavata is a software toolkit currently used to build science
> gateways but that has a much wider potential use. It provides features
> to compose, manage, execute, and monitor large scale applications and
> workflows on computational resources ranging from local clusters to
> national grids and computing clouds. Users can use Airavata back end
> services and build gadgets to deploy in open social containers such as
> Apache Rave and modify them to suite their needs. Airavata builds on
> general concepts of service oriented computing, distributed messaging,
> and workflow composition and orchestration.
>
>
> == Proposal ==
>
> Airavata will provide web interfaces and scalable Service Oriented
> Architecture based backend services to build or enhance Science
> Gateway (see https://www.teragrid.org/web/science-gateways/)
> and similar environments. Airavata will specifically focus on:
>
>   1. sophisticated server-side tools for registering and managing large
> scale applications on computational resources.
>   2. graphical user interfaces to construct, execute, control, manage
> and reuse of scientific workflows.
>   3. interfacing and interoperability with with various external (third
> party) data and provenance management tools.
>
> == Background ==
> Working in close quarters with Apache Axis2 committers and inspired by
> the true open source community driven software development of ASF,
> Suresh Marru and Marlon Pierce have been pioneering the idea of a
> Science Gateways software-based Apache project since late 2008. Many
> Apache members have fostered these ideas and guided them to arrive at
> this proposal.
>
> Currently the software is a actively used in various science
> gateways. But the tools are general purpose and build upon widely used
> Apache tools like Axis2, ODE engine. The core team is motivated to
> expand the community and build a community welcoming both synergistic
> software components and also new usage scenarios.
>
> It is perhaps worth noting that one of the three seed projects that
> make up the Apache Rave (Incubating) project is also the product of
> this same team and is derived from the same Science Gateways
> community.
>
> == Rationale ==
>
> The nature of computational problems has evolved from simple desktop
> calculations to complex, multidisciplinary activities that require the
> monitoring and analysis of remote data streams, database and web
> search and large ensembles of simulations. In the academic domain
> Science Gateways have emerged to address these needs and have built
> software platforms that provide a community of users with the ability
> to easily solve computational problems within a specific domain. The
> tools developed to support these gateways are potentially of value to
> any organisation needing to perform complex computations. Gateways
> provide a convenient interface to the underlying infrastrucure without
> the need for a deep understanding of the intricacies that
> infrastructure.
>
> We summarize the rationale for choosing The Apache Software Foundation
> (ASF) below. This is what we hope to gain from participating in the
> ASF.
>
>   1. '''Broader impact''': our science gateway tool set is based on
> Service Oriented Architecture principles, and it has always been our
> goal to align our software with broader trends in the development of
> software for distributed systems.  Participating in the ASF provides a
> concrete way to implement this idea.  In particular, we have done
> extensive work on the workflow systems, messaging, and application
> management as Web services from the perspective of computational science
> use cases (i.e., high failure rates, very long running jobs, dynamic
> service creation, workflows not expressible as directed acyclic graphs,
> etc). These requirements and our work to implement them have already had
> direct impact on the Apache Axis 2 and Apache ODE projects. As an Apache
> project, it is hoped that our community will have an enhanced
> opportunity for collaboration and complementary development with Apache
> Hadoop (for scientific application management), Apache QPID (for
> messaging), Apache Rave (incubator - Open Social Container) and others.
>  It is our goal to expand our software’s usage beyond just science
> gateways to the broader enterprise community.
>   2. '''Sustainability''': Science gateway software development (and
> cyberinfrastructure software generally) is primarily funded in the US by
> the National Science Foundation (NSF), so the long term sustainability
> of software across funding cycles is a longstanding problem.  The NSF is
> attempting to solve this problem, and its vision for sustainable
> software is described  here:
> http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10015/nsf10015.jsp. Participating in the
> ASF is our project’s vision for reaching software sustainability that
> underpins the NSF CF21 vision.  As a successful ASF project (after
> incubation), we will have created a community led, rather than funding
> led, environment for the development of our sotware. This community,
> through our community engagement work and adoption of meritocratic
> principles, will expand beyond our current core team and existing
> project collaborations.  This will greatly increase the chances that our
> software will continue to grow and improve beyond the participation of
> any individuals.
>   3. '''Maturity''': much of the software included in this proposal was
> developed initially by graduate students as part of their Ph. D. work.
> The Open Grid Computing Environment has devoted significant effort
> (through salaried staff and volunteers from collaborating institutions)
> to convert these research projects into mature, reliable, well-written,
> packaged components.  The code is currently hosted at SourceForge, but
> we recognize the need to go beyond just the SourceForge support tools to
> participate in a real community of software engineering experts. It is
> our desire, through the Apache Incubator, to take our software
> engineering efforts to a higher level by learning from the substantial
> experience of appropraite Apache Committers. Apache mentors will provide
> initial guidance, as will  the attraction of additional committers from
> the relevant Apache projects.
>
> == Initial Goals ==
>
>   * Implement a standalone version of the code base with a simple hello
> world service, workflow and gadget(s) to access the examples.
>   * Migration of documentation and design knowledge from existing SF
> project
>   * Re-architect Grid based security (GSI) dependencies and adopt more
> general purpose security implementations.
>   * Make sure Cloud (including hadoop) support is more first class.
>   * Aim to have the first Apache release within the first 6 months
>   * Verify with Apache Legal that some of the more esoteric licences in
> our dependencies are acceptable, or replace them as appropriate
>
> == Current Status ==
>
> The proposed tools are currently hosted on SourceForge at
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/ogce/ (source at
> https://ogce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ogce/ogce-xbaya-gui/) and are
> described at http://www.collab-ogce.org.
>
> == Meritocracy ==
>
> A significant portion of initial committers are already ASF
> Committers/Members,
> and the entire team is well experienced with open source software
> development. The existing code base has resulted from
> multi-institutional collaborative projects. The developers are well
> aware of the Apache way and will honor the meritocracy policy of ASF
> foundation.
>
> == Community ==
>
> To date our focus has been serving our immediate partners needs rather
> than looking outwards in order to build a broader community with
> diverse needs. Whilst the core team area likely to remain focussed on
> the Science Gateways communities we are keen to welcome community
> members from other disciplines.
>
> == Core Developers ==
> Our core developers consist of participants from academic,
> not-for-profit and for-profit organisations. Many are already well
> versed in The Apache Way.
>
> Amongst our initial team we have one or more committers on the
> following Apache top level projects; axis, geronimo, synapse, ws,
> ws-pmc, ws-woden as well as Apache Rave (Incubating).
>
> == Alignment ==
> Airavata software is built upon Apache Projects like Axis2, ODE,
> Rampart, Tomcat and Maven. We will try to closely align the project
> with ODE to ensure BPEL workflow compatibility. We will align with
> metadata management projects like Apache OODT. Web interfaces within
> the Airavata software will be synergistically developed with Apache
> Rave.
>
> == Known Risks ==
> === Orphaned products ===
> We acknowledge the need to seek project contributions outside the current
> developers. The core team actively travels and conducts workshops and
> tutorials at relevant academic conferences like Supercomputing, TeraGrid,
> Collaborative Technologies Systems and SciDAC. Previous experiences
> have showed that these tutorials and outreach efforts will bring in
> community participation. The general strategy will be to encourage
> users to be active in the community and develop patches and
> contribute. Also, the core developers use the Airavata software in
> multiple projects with a life span ranging from 2 to 10 years, so the
> risk of orphaned products is very minimal.
>
> Furthermore, by opening our doors to non-academic organisations
> already adopting large scale computation related projects in the ASF
> we hope to be able to build community beyond the proposing teams
> Science Gateway interests.
>
> === Inexperience with Open Source ===
> The core team is very familiar with open source practices. The
> developers include existing Apache members who have long term experience
> with
> the Apache Way. The OGCE project has been an active
> open source project in SourceForge since November 2006. We welcome the
> new directions and are well prepared to follow the Apache way.
>
> === Homogenous Developers ===
> We have a semi-distributed development environment distributed among
> Indiana University and Lanka Software Foundation. We fully expect
> contributions from the partnering science gateways adding to the
> heterogeneous development.
>
> === Reliance on Salaried Developers ===
> The core developers are self motivated on the project and also are
> funded through various federal, state and endowment research
> grants. Participation in these research efforts based on Airavata
> software is mostly voluntary and above and beyond the requirements of
> the salaried jobs.
>
> The Open Gateway Computing project, from which the initial code
> donation is sourced, is funded for the next 3 years and is mandated by
> the funding guidelines to open source software development -
> http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1032742. We
> believe in the Airavata software capabilities and its vital role in
> providing sustainable middleware for Science Gateways. Nevertheless,
> the core team will actively build upon Airavata software and foster
> developer community outside the current core.
>
> === Relationships with Other Apache Products ===
> See “Alignment” above.  Airavata is based on the concepts of Service
> Oriented Architecture and all services run within Tomcat
> container. The web services are based on Axis2. The orchestration of
> the scientific workflows uses Orchestration Director Engine. The
> software is built using Apache Maven.
>
> === An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ===
> The Apache brand would certainly help promote the software suite, but
> gaining the brand is not the motivation for this project. Airavata is
> being proposed to Apache because of the belief in Apache’s meritocracy
> model for mentored, community-driven, open source software is the best
> way to develop sustainable software. See “Rational” above. Most
> importantly, The Apache Software Foundation will help us create an
> institution-neutral contribution venue and will help us build a
> long-standing community around Airavata to sustain and improve it
> beyond the span of specific, targeted research grants.
>
> == Documentation ==
> Existing documentation is available from the OGCE wiki,
> http://www.collab-ogce.org/ogce/index.php/Main_Page. In addition,
> there is abundance of presentation and self guided video tutorial
> material. Effort will be put in to collect all this information into
> meaningful documentation on the Apache websites.
>
> == Initial Source ==
> The initial source of the project is in SourceForge. The source is
> available for anonymous check out from svn at
> https://ogce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ogce/ogce-xbaya-gui/
>
> == Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan ==
> Indiana University is the current holder of Intellectual Property
> rights for the software. The university has approved the code donation
> and signed trustees approval, Corporate Contributor Licence Agreement
> and Software Grant Agreement have been emailed to ASF secretary and
> received acknowledgement.
>
> Specifically Indiana University will donate 4 components into Airavata
> project.
>
>   1. XBaya Scientific Workflow Suite - includes a GUI for workflow
> composition and monitoring. The composed workflow can be exported to
> various workflow languages like BPEL, SCUFL, Condor DAG, Jython and
> Java. The defacto workflow enacting engine used is Apache ODE.
>   2. GFac - an application wrapper service that can be used to wrap
> command line-driven science applications and make them into robust,
> network- accessible services. This component is build on Axis2 web
> service stack.
>   3. XRegistry - a registry service for storing deployment information
> about wrapped application services and constructed workflows.
>   4. WS-Messenger - a “publish-subscribe” based message broker
> implemented on top of Apache Axis2 web services stack. It implements the
> WS-Eventing and WS-Notifications specifications and incorporates a
> message box component that facilities communications with clients behind
> firewalls and overcomes network glitches.
>
> == External Dependencies ==
>
> Following the guideline -http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html, the
> following are the dependent software and all of them are in binary
> format in java archive (jar files).
>
>    * CDDL license  - Javax activation, JSR311, Portlet-API, Servlet-API
>    * Apache V2: cog-jglobus, globus, caster, gridsphere, Woodstox,
> xmpp, xsul, sigiri, atomixmiser, weps-beans.
>    * BSD: puretls,
>    * MIT: bcporv, hsqldb, dom4j, slf4j
>    * PSFL: Jython
>    * GPL 2.0: mysql-connector-java
>    * Other:
>      * cryptix32, cryptix-asn1 (http://www.cryptix.org/LICENSE.TXT)
>      * backport (public domain)
>      * jaxen (http://jaxen.codehaus.org/license.html)
>
> Licence incompatibilities (GPL) will be resolved during incubation.
>
> == Cryptography ==
> The software does not implement any cryptographic algorithms. However,
> to perform secured messaging and data movement and SSL communications,
> the software depends upon third party security libraries. These
> external libraries depend in turn on Java Security, Puretls, Cryptix
> and Bounce Castle libraries. Apache Cryptographic steps will be
> followed to register the use of these libraries.
>
> == Required Resources ==
>
> === Mailing lists ===
>   1. airavata-dev
>   2. airavata-commits
>   3. airavata-private
>
> === Subversion Directory ===
> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/airavata
>
> === Issue Tracking ===
> We intend to make use of Jira for issue tracking. Proposed key: AIRAVATA
>
> === Other Resources ===
>
> We intend to manage our website using the Apache CMS.
>
> == Initial Committers ==
> Names of initial committers with affiliation and current ASF status:
>
> || '''Name'''           || '''Email'''            || '''Affiliation'''
>        || '''ICLA''' || '''ASF Status''' || '''Apache Id''' ||
> || Suresh Marru         || sma...@cs.indiana.edu  || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Commiter || smarru    ||
> || Marlon Pierce        || mpie...@cs.indiana.edu || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Commiter || mpierce   ||
> || Srinath Perera       || hemap...@apache.org    || Lanka Software
> Foundation || On File || Apache Member   || hemapani  ||
> || Aleksander Slominski || aslom at us.ibm.com    || IBM
>        || On File || Apache Member   || aslom     ||
> || Raminderjeet Singh   || rami...@indiana.edu    || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Commiter || raminder  ||
> || Archit Kulshrestha   || akuls...@indiana.edu   || Indiana University
>        || On File || N/A             || N/A       ||
> || Chathura Herath      || chath...@apache.org    || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Commiter || chathura  ||
> || Eran Chinthaka       || chinth...@apache.org   || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Member   || chinthaka ||
> || Thilina Gunaratne    || thil...@apache.org     || Indiana University
>        || On File || Apache Commiter || thilina   ||
> || Wathsala Vithanage   || waths...@opensource.lk || Lanka Software
> Foundation || On File || N/A             || N/A       ||
>
> All the parties are affiliated with companies and organizations that
> are familiar with the development of open source. We expect that the
> amount of volunteer work will increase, and more developers will come
> on board.
>
> == Champion ==
> Ross Gardler, Apache Software Foundation
>
> == Nominated Mentors ==
>   * Ross Gardler, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>   * Alek Slominski, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>   * Ate Douma, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>   * Sanjiva Weerawarna, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>   * Paul Fremantle, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>
> == Sponsoring Entity ==
> Apache Incubator Project.
>
>
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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Chris Mattmann, Ph.D.
Senior Computer Scientist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
Office: 171-266B, Mailstop: 171-246
Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov
WWW:   http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


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