Original use cases
From EGI Knowledge Base
[edit] New Community
Some scientists of a community with little Grid experience would like to use the Grid for some project. If successful they believe that colleagues from the same country or from other countries would join them. They want to make sure that the application is running asap and that the group can be expanded later. What is the role of EGI in this process?
[edit] Data provision
A research group is willing to connect their legacy digital archive (i.e., non grid enabled, used only locally) to a grid so their colleagues could access the data(in a controlled way). How the EGI will help them?
Jamie Shiers: by maintaining a (short) list of standards for data access, including the question of authentication and authorization. The issue of non-Grid access - essentially a 'back-door' needs to be carefully considered.
[edit] New Resource Provider
On request of some of their scientists, a large compute center of a university is willing to join the Grid. However, the director of the center wants to retain control over his resources and he wants to make sure that only little additional personal resources must be provided by the center. How does EGI help?
Jamie Shiers: the amount of resources required will depend on two things: a) what services the director decides to offer (more services, more manpower - some require more manpower than others; b) the level of automation and robustness of the middleware and the deployment / operational aspects of the corresponding services. EGI can play a strong role in the latter, which in turn will provide positive feedback in attracting further sites to offer their resources.
[edit] Local Middleware development
A regional group of scientists has developed some middleware component and wants to make sure that interoperability with the Grid middleware is given. The component may be of interest to other communities as well. How does EGI help in the testing, integration and distribution of the component?
[edit] Application for Funds
A new group of scientists wants to start a new project involving Grid computing. How is EGI involved in the funding application?
Jamie Shiers: this will to a large extent depend on the nature of the application and its time criticality. Some - such as disaster response - require resources (hopefully) rarely and even then for shortish periods. Others can make 'opportunistic use' of any available resources (typically modelling or simulation activities. It is nevertheless essential to have continuous production use of the Grid infrastructure - if lying idle for long periods it will not be usable when needed. This in turn provides a motivation for funding 'opportunistic' or long-term 'grand challenge' applications, which can provide a significant incentive to setup large scale infrastructures and also to make sure that they are usable when needed with priority by a time critical application.
[edit] Update of Middleware
A new middleware version is provided with significant changes. How does EGI support the update process?
[edit] Middleware Sharing
The LCG community and the Bio-scientist group are going to use the Grid. Which Grid components are these two groups going to use jointly and which EGI support do they need for running their application?
Comments from Jamie Shiers: IMHO there is a clear distinction between generic middleware (definition is provided by the following) and those middleware components which require detailed knowledge of the computing model of the application area. Even within the LCG community, the 4 LHC experiments have significant differences in their computing models which strongly impact on the suitability and usage of existing middleware components. As an example, only two (ATLAS and LHCb) explicitly use a generic file catalog component, but in very different ways (ATLAS as a 'local' file catalog, covering a Tier1-Tier2 cloud (in their nomenclature); LHCb as a global catalog with a R/O replica (eventually) at all of their Tier1 sites (R/W master at the Tier0 - CERN. Another example is the gLite File Transfer Service, where again the computing models, whilst globally similar at the high level, differ sufficiently in detail that specific developments and deployment models had to be foreseen.
[edit] Extension of middleware to new knowledge domains
A group of social scientists with little Grid experience want to adapt a Grid service developed in the natural or bio sciences to their specific needs. What help is available from EGI?
[edit] Discovery of middleware components
A group of social scientists with little Grid experience want to establish if there exist middleware components that would provide new ways of addressing the key challenges of their disciplines. How would EGI support the discovery process?
[edit] Hardening of middleware
A research group has developed a new Grid service that is proving to be of interest to a wider community of researchers. However, the service needs to be ‘productionised’, that is, made robust and stable, with comprehensive documentation. What part would EGI play in this process?
Comment from Jamie Shiers: I believe that 'EGI' should play a role much earlier in this process, e.g. by establishing a check-list of best practices for middleware development, documentation, deployment, operation etc. We have a (draft) checklist that was established in EGEE (see operations session at Culham workshop) plus extensive experience over many years in trying - often retro-actively - to bring new middleware components up to production level. This includes a (very) small number of deployment techniques plus an operations checklist. However, these need to be taken into account at the design stage - not the deployment stage. See Lessons Learned from WLCG Service Deployment Comment from Ludek: The document pointed above does have restricted access and is not visible (even with my access rights to indico I had not been able to download it).
[edit] Sustainability
There is a national review on the eInfrastructure. The review is to decide (among other) the funding for NGI for the next period. Could EGI help in providing foreign experts, information about situation in other countries, some analytical documents etc?
[edit] e-Infrastructure Continuity
Teams of more than 200 VOs, of which more than 100 officially registered, are using today the current EGEE e-Infrastructure for their daily work with variable frequency. EDG/EGEE/EGEE II have shown to be effective and successful in continuously expanding the scientific domains exploiting a general EU e-Infrastructure. How will EGI support/improve the expansion of such process?
[edit] EU e_Infrastructures Sharing
Groups of a new community need for their different applications to use both current major EU e-Infrastructures of EGEE and DEISA. How can EGI help in establishing a unique framework for using them jointly?
[edit] International dimension
Today communities like HEP, Astronomy and Astrophysics and certainly others in future need to establish a world-wide VO capable of exploiting the different e-Infrastructures available in the world. How can EGI help in this process?
[edit] Standardization of Middleware
Communities needing to exploit e-Infrastructures based on different middleware stacks strongly push for a simplification/unification of the different Interfaces How does EGI support the standardization process?
[edit] New tools
Some research communities have identified at EU level e new software tools that they need for their activity. What part would EGI play in promoting a development process?
Jamie Shiers: see under 'hardening' above. Something can still be done at this stage, but it is far from being optimal.
