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From: Sagara Gunathunga <sagara@apache.org>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:15:16 +0530
Message-ID: <BANLkTimELFqQMShCB=XJDoqsTuCHqVaeCg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Airavata for the incubator
To: general@incubator.apache.org
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Hi Ross,

+1 and  I would like to contribute for this project.

Thanks !

On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 3:23 AM, Ross Gardler <rgardler@apache.org> 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 ma=
il.
> For those in a hurry here's a quick summary:
>
> Airavata is a software toolkit currently used to build science gateways b=
ut
> 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 gadg=
ets
> to deploy in open social containers such as Apache Rave and modify them t=
o
> suite their needs. Airavata builds on general concepts of service oriente=
d
> 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. =A0sophisticated server-side tools for registering and managing large =
scale
> applications on computational resources.
>
> 2. =A0graphical user interfaces to construct, execute, control, manage an=
d
> reuse of scientific workflows.
>
> 3. =A0interfacing 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 t=
he
> code comes from the same stable as some of the code donated to Apache Rav=
e
> (Incubating).
>
> We welcome your questions, suggestions, observations and support.
>
> Ross
>
> [1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/AiravataProposal
>
> FULL PROPOSAL TEXT
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>
> =3D Airavata Proposal for Apache Incubator =3D
>
> =3D=3D Abstract =3D=3D
> 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.
>
>
> =3D=3D Proposal =3D=3D
>
> 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:
>
> =A01. sophisticated server-side tools for registering and managing large =
scale
> applications on computational resources.
> =A02. graphical user interfaces to construct, execute, control, manage an=
d
> reuse of scientific workflows.
> =A03. interfacing and interoperability with with various external (third
> party) data and provenance management tools.
>
> =3D=3D Background =3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Rationale =3D=3D
>
> 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.
>
> =A01. '''Broader impact''': our science gateway tool set is based on Serv=
ice
> Oriented Architecture principles, and it has always been our goal to alig=
n
> our software with broader trends in the development of software for
> distributed systems. =A0Participating in the ASF provides a concrete way =
to
> implement this idea. =A0In particular, we have done extensive work on the
> workflow systems, messaging, and application management as Web services f=
rom
> 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. =A0It is our goal to expand our software=E2=
=80=99s
> usage beyond just science gateways to the broader enterprise community.
> =A02. '''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. =A0The NSF is
> attempting to solve this problem, and its vision for sustainable software=
 is
> described =A0here: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10015/nsf10015.jsp.
> Participating in the ASF is our project=E2=80=99s vision for reaching sof=
tware
> sustainability that underpins the NSF CF21 vision. =A0As 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. =A0This will greatly increase the chance=
s
> that our software will continue to grow and improve beyond the participat=
ion
> of any individuals.
> =A03. '''Maturity''': much of the software included in this proposal was
> developed initially by graduate students as part of their Ph. D. work. Th=
e
> 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. =A0The code is currently hosted at SourceForge, but we recogn=
ize
> the need to go beyond just the SourceForge support tools to participate i=
n a
> real community of software engineering experts. It is our desire, through
> the Apache Incubator, to take our software engineering efforts to a highe=
r
> level by learning from the substantial experience of appropraite Apache
> Committers. Apache mentors will provide initial guidance, as will =A0the
> attraction of additional committers from the relevant Apache projects.
>
> =3D=3D Initial Goals =3D=3D
>
> =A0* Implement a standalone version of the code base with a simple hello =
world
> service, workflow and gadget(s) to access the examples.
> =A0* Migration of documentation and design knowledge from existing SF pro=
ject
> =A0* Re-architect Grid based security (GSI) dependencies and adopt more
> general purpose security implementations.
> =A0* Make sure Cloud (including hadoop) support is more first class.
> =A0* Aim to have the first Apache release within the first 6 months
> =A0* Verify with Apache Legal that some of the more esoteric licences in =
our
> dependencies are acceptable, or replace them as appropriate
>
> =3D=3D Current Status =3D=3D
>
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Meritocracy =3D=3D
>
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Community =3D=3D
>
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Core Developers =3D=3D
> 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).
>
> =3D=3D Alignment =3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Known Risks =3D=3D
> =3D=3D=3D Orphaned products =3D=3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D=3D Inexperience with Open Source =3D=3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D=3D Homogenous Developers =3D=3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D=3D Reliance on Salaried Developers =3D=3D=3D
> 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=3D1032742. 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.
>
> =3D=3D=3D Relationships with Other Apache Products =3D=3D=3D
> See =E2=80=9CAlignment=E2=80 =A0above. =A0Airavata is based on the concep=
ts 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.
>
> =3D=3D=3D An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand =3D=3D=3D
> 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=E2=80=99s merito=
cracy
> model for mentored, community-driven, open source software is the best
> way to develop sustainable software. See =E2=80=9CRational=E2=80 =A0above=
. 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.
>
> =3D=3D Documentation =3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Initial Source =3D=3D
> 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/
>
> =3D=3D Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan =3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =A01. XBaya Scientific Workflow Suite - includes a GUI for workflow
> composition and monitoring. The composed workflow can be exported to vari=
ous
> workflow languages like BPEL, SCUFL, Condor DAG, Jython and Java. The
> defacto workflow enacting engine used is Apache ODE.
> =A02. GFac - an application wrapper service that can be used to wrap comm=
and
> line-driven science applications and make them into robust, network-
> accessible services. This component is build on Axis2 web service stack.
> =A03. XRegistry - a registry service for storing deployment information a=
bout
> wrapped application services and constructed workflows.
> =A04. WS-Messenger - a =E2=80=9Cpublish-subscribe=E2=80 =A0based message =
broker
> implemented on top of Apache Axis2 web services stack. It implements the
> WS-Eventing and WS-Notifications specifications and incorporates a messag=
e
> box component that facilities communications with clients behind firewall=
s
> and overcomes network glitches.
>
> =3D=3D External Dependencies =3D=3D
>
> 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).
>
> =A0 * CDDL license =A0- Javax activation, JSR311, Portlet-API, Servlet-AP=
I
> =A0 * Apache V2: cog-jglobus, globus, caster, gridsphere, Woodstox, xmpp,
> xsul, sigiri, atomixmiser, weps-beans.
> =A0 * BSD: puretls,
> =A0 * MIT: bcporv, hsqldb, dom4j, slf4j
> =A0 * PSFL: Jython
> =A0 * GPL 2.0: mysql-connector-java
> =A0 * Other:
> =A0 =A0 * cryptix32, cryptix-asn1 (http://www.cryptix.org/LICENSE.TXT)
> =A0 =A0 * backport (public domain)
> =A0 =A0 * jaxen (http://jaxen.codehaus.org/license.html)
>
> Licence incompatibilities (GPL) will be resolved during incubation.
>
> =3D=3D Cryptography =3D=3D
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Required Resources =3D=3D
>
> =3D=3D=3D Mailing lists =3D=3D=3D
> =A01. airavata-dev
> =A02. airavata-commits
> =A03. airavata-private
>
> =3D=3D=3D Subversion Directory =3D=3D=3D
> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/airavata
>
> =3D=3D=3D Issue Tracking =3D=3D=3D
> We intend to make use of Jira for issue tracking. Proposed key: AIRAVATA
>
> =3D=3D=3D Other Resources =3D=3D=3D
>
> We intend to manage our website using the Apache CMS.
>
> =3D=3D Initial Committers =3D=3D
> Names of initial committers with affiliation and current ASF status:
>
> || '''Name''' =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 || '''Email''' =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|=
| '''Affiliation'''
> =A0|| '''ICLA''' || '''ASF Status''' || '''Apache Id''' ||
> || Suresh Marru =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 || smarru@cs.indiana.edu =A0|| Indiana Un=
iversity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Commiter || smarru =A0 =A0||
> || Marlon Pierce =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|| mpierce@cs.indiana.edu || Indiana Univ=
ersity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Commiter || mpierce =A0 ||
> || Srinath Perera =A0 =A0 =A0 || hemapani@apache.org =A0 =A0|| Lanka Soft=
ware
> Foundation || On File || Apache Member =A0 || hemapani =A0||
> || Aleksander Slominski || aslom at us.ibm.com =A0 =A0|| IBM =A0 =A0 =A0 =
=A0|| On File
> || Apache Member =A0 || aslom =A0 =A0 ||
> || Raminderjeet Singh =A0 || ramifnu@indiana.edu =A0 =A0|| Indiana Univer=
sity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Commiter || raminder =A0||
> || Archit Kulshrestha =A0 || akulshre@indiana.edu =A0 || Indiana Universi=
ty
> =A0 =A0|| On File || N/A =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 || N/A =A0 =A0 =A0 ||
> || Chathura Herath =A0 =A0 =A0|| chathura@apache.org =A0 =A0|| Indiana Un=
iversity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Commiter || chathura =A0||
> || Eran Chinthaka =A0 =A0 =A0 || chinthaka@apache.org =A0 || Indiana Univ=
ersity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Member =A0 || chinthaka ||
> || Thilina Gunaratne =A0 =A0|| thilina@apache.org =A0 =A0 || Indiana Univ=
ersity
> =A0 =A0|| On File || Apache Commiter || thilina =A0 ||
> || Wathsala Vithanage =A0 || wathsala@opensource.lk || Lanka Software
> Foundation || On File || N/A =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 || N/A =A0 =A0 =A0 |=
|
>
> 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.
>
> =3D=3D Champion =3D=3D
> Ross Gardler, Apache Software Foundation
>
> =3D=3D Nominated Mentors =3D=3D
> =A0* Ross Gardler, Member, Apache Software Foundation
> =A0* Alek Slominski, Member, Apache Software Foundation
> =A0* Ate Douma, Member, Apache Software Foundation
> =A0* Sanjiva Weerawarna, Member, Apache Software Foundation
> =A0* Paul Fremantle, Member, Apache Software Foundation
>
> =3D=3D Sponsoring Entity =3D=3D
> Apache Incubator Project.
>
>
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--=20
Sagara Gunathunga

Blog - http://ssagara.blogspot.com
Web - http://people.apache.org/~sagara/

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