The Integration of Peertopeer and the Grid to Support Scientific Collaboration

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The Integration of Peer-to-peer and the Grid to
Support Scientific Collaboration

• Tran Vu Pham, Lydia MS Lau Peter M Dew
• tranp, llau dew_at_comp.leeds.ac.uk
• Presented by Duncan Russell
• School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK

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Content

• Introduction
• Context The Combustion Chemistry Research
  Community
• The Integration of Peer-to-peer and the Grid
• Potential Application of the Semantic Grid
• Conclusion and Work to Be Done

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Introduction

• Current research focus on infrastructure to
  support scientific collaboration
• The Grid
• Enabling flexible, secure, coordinated resource
  sharing amongst dynamic collections of
  individuals, institutions and resources (Foster
  2001)

• Service-Oriented Architecture
• Aiming for interoperability within Grid
  environment
• Semantic Grid
• Adding more semantics to describe resources in a
  way that is understandable to computer programs,
  hence, enable seamless automation.

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Introduction

• What is missing?
• Facilities for front end scientists conveniently
  to gain access to computing resources on the Grid
• Support for direct lightweight collaboration
  amongst scientists, e.g. sharing files, messaging
• Front end scientists are people who directly use
  the resources and are also the sources of new
  resources in scientific communities

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Introduction

• Peer-to-peer architecture
• Has been successful in file sharing application
  in commercial world
• Napster, Kazaa, Freenet, eDonkey etc.

• Advantages of Peer-to-peer
• Bring end users closer to their communities and
  shared resources
• Sense of privacy and ownership over shared
  resources
• Ad hoc groups can be formed easily to support
  collaborative work
• Scientific communities need can benefit from both
  peer-to-peer architecture and the Grid

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A Case Study The Combustion Chemistry Research
Community

• Main research activity building models of
  chemical reactions
• Steps of building a reaction mechanism model

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Challenges Posed by Requirements from the
Community

• Building models of chemical reactions
• Require inputs (e.g experimental data, reaction
  rate coefficients) from various sources (model
  users from other disciplines, experimenters,
  other model builders)
• Need a collection of tools for simulations and
  analysis
• Difficulties
• Data is scattered around the community
• Sometimes, improperly evaluated
• Model builders have limited access to all
  available data
• The community needs
• Collaborative sharing environment for data and
  information relevant to compiling reaction models
• Tools for enabling collaboration amongst its
  participants to contribute data and expertise to
  building models

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The Integration of Peer-to-peer and the Grid

• Goal
• Provide a collaborative environment for
  scientists to gain access to and manipulate
  resources on the Grid.
• Improve collaboration amongst scientific
  communities
• Achieved by
• Separating heavy computations and storage from
  lightweight collaboration by using the Grid and
  Peer-to-peer environment
• Using Service-Oriented Architecture as means of
  integration
• Applying technologies of the Semantic grid to
  facilitate the discovery and orchestration of
  resources

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The Integrated Architecture
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Potential Application of the Semantic Grid

• The use of Semantic Grid technology
• To support resource discovery, e.g. service
  discovery
• To enable higher level of automation
• The challenges
• Ontology evolves over time
• Ontology cannot be centralised and static in a
  peer-to-peer environment
• Building ontology is a continuous process
• Ontologies should be local to communities who use
  them

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Potential Application of the Semantic Grid

• Proposed approach
• Evolution of Peer-to-peer community

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Potential Application of the Semantic Grid

• Proposed approach
• Through evolution members of peer-to-peer are
  organised into communities and sub-communities
• If a peer is a member of a sub-community, it is
  also a member of the parent communities

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Potential Application of the Semantic Grid

• Proposed approach
• Each community will agree on a common ontology
  for its own use
• The organisation of ontologies is as of
  communities
• The ontology of a sub-community inherits the
  ontologies of its parents

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Potential Application of the Semantic Grid

• Proposed approach
• The ontology of a sub inherits the ontologies of
  its parents, and can be extended with further
  terms and specifications
• Ontology changes of a community will be made
  democratically by its members

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Conclusion and Work to Be Done

• Summary
• The integration of Peer-to-peer and the Grid
• A potential application of the Semantic Grid
• Current prototype
• Integration JXTA peer-to-peer with Globus Toolkit
  
• An initial ontology for Combustion Chemistry
  domain has been developed but not yet been used
  in the integration prototype
• The initial ontology using OWL
  http//www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/scs1tvp/onto/chem
  onto.owl
• Work to be done
• Implement semantic architecture in the integrated
  architecture

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Questions?

• Email tranp_at_comp.leeds.ac.uk