BIRN Portal Overview

1
BIRN Portal Overview

• Jason Novotny / Ramil Manansala / Thien Nguyen
• BIRN Portal Architect
• BIRN Coordinating Center

2
About BIRN

• Provides a shared biomedical IT infrastructure
  for studying and researching various neurological
  diseases

• BIRN-CC oversees infrastructure and software
  development
• Function BIRN
• Studying schizophrenia
• Mouse BIRN
• Utilizing mouse data to understand brain
  disorders
• Brain Morphometry
• Investigating memory dysfunctions

3
Purpose of BIRN Portal

• Provide a flexible, comprehensive collaborative
  user environment for scientists to share data,
  tools and research.
• Provide transparent access to underlying
  computing and networking infrastructure across
  distributed organizations
• Provide a single point of access for managing a
  collection of research projects across virtual
  organizations comprised of distributed
  researchers

Develop software that can be reused by other
biomedical research activities and ultimately
other application domains
4
A Portal Transition

• Previous BIRN Portal implementation a stove pipe
  solution

• Based on Perl/CGI
• Difficult to extend
• Not easy to setup
• Unable to take advantage of features/applications
  provided by other portals
• Difficult for other project members to develop
  remotely

5
How can BIRN portal benefit from GridSphere?

• Portlet API is a standard accepted by all major
  portal vendors
• Modular development model using J2EE
• Built-in features including user management, role
  based access control
• Community development of portlets, e.g.
  gridportlets, GAMA (GEON/Telescience/BIRN)
• Reuse existing portlets for BIRN portal needs
• GridPortlets/GAMA supports credential management
• Can have greater impact on portal community by
  sharing BIRN portlets

6
BIRN Portal based on GridSphere

• Takes advantage of core GridSphere portlets, user
  management, security
• BIRN-CC developed portlets for data access,
  collaboration

7
BIRN Portal Major Requirements

• Needs to be grid-enabled since underlying
  infrastructure uses GSI for authentication
• Need to provide scientists access to data using
  Storage Resource Broker (SRB)
• Needs to provide mechanism for scientists to
  collaborate
• Create, join new research projects
• Share data
• Support for discussions (both real time and thru
  forums)
• Needs to provide informational content

8
BIRN Portal Security

• Users require grid credentials for accessing
  compute and storage resources
• Grid Account Management Architecture developed at
  UCSD (GEON, Telescience , BIRN) makes credential
  management easier and integrates with portal
  environment
• GAMA used by several high-profile projects (GEON,
  Telescience, UK eScience)
• Users only need login name and password to
  obtain access
• Logged in user automatically has access to grid
  credential
• GridSphere supports multiple authentication
  modules used for login
• By default Password Module stores hashed
  passwords in DB
• GAMA provides custom authentication module that
  retrieves users credential for use from the
  portal

9
BIRN Portal uses GAMA for security needs

• Grid Account and Management Architecture

• User and admin portlets provide account
  creation/approval including credential creation
  using provided CA
• Stores credentials using MyProxy server
• GAMA server is locked down, only portal has access

10
Collaborative features of BIRN portal

• Provide a shared environment for exchanging
  ideas, research, knowledge, data
• Projects -- Intended to encapsulate a specific
  research activity
• Can be public (viewable by users not affiliated
  with project) or private
• Forums -- Facilitate online discussions
• Blogs -- Researches can create journal, news
  feed, release announcements, etc. that can be
  private or shared with other members
• Lists -- Provides mechanism for researchers to
  share bookmarks, contacts, RSS feeds, reminders
• Email -- Simple e-mail client can be used to send
  mails out to members of a project
• Chat -- Researchers can chat with other logged in
  portal users for real time interaction

11
Data management features of BIRN Portal

• Core part of BIRN infrastructure is Storage
  Resource Broker

• SRB portlets provide web based interface for
  interacting with SRB using common desktop
  paradigms
• Navigation, upload, download, metadata,
  permissions, launching external tools for viewing
  analyzing data
• Shared data spaces for collaborative projects
  created on the fly

12
BIRN Portal Architecture
Advanced Grid Middleware Portlets
Generic Portlets
Grid Security Management (GAMA)
Data Management (SRB)
BIRN pages / portlets
Collaborative portlets
Grid Portlets
Grid Middleware
Generic Portal
GridSphere Portal / Portlet container / Core
portlets
13
Adoption of GridSphere within BIRN project

• Continued GridSphere development influenced by
  BIRN requirements
• BIRN-CC
• Collaborative and SRB portlets
• CCDB
• Mouse BIRN

• Iowa
• Function BIRN and Huntingtons Project
• NIH-CIT
• NDAR Autism Project and Pediatric MR database
• MGH
• Morphometry BIRN

14
GridSphere / BIRN collaborations

• Working with other projects in a UC San Diego
  wide portals technology group
• Telescience RD portal at NBCR and NCMIR
• NIEHS Hurricane Response Portal (Katrina/Rita)
  supported by Telescience
• GIS site for analyzing long-term health effects
  of Katrina and Rita
• GEON geophysics network at SDSC
• Collaboratory for earth scientists to share
  geoscience data
• Cell Centered Database Portal at NCMIR
• Archive of 3D microscopic imaging data - used by
  Mouse BIRN
• CAMERA project UCSD Calit2/J. Craig Venter
  Institute
• Gain understanding of genetic relationships
  between thousands of organisms collected from the
  ocean and elsewhere

15
BIRN Portal Activities for the Next 6-12 Months

• Continue improving usability of existing portlets
  based on user feedback
• Improve overall application interactivity
• Deliver and support SRB and Collaboration
  portlets to be used in projects worldwide
• Continued integration of applications and
  workflows
• Develop additional use cases

16
BIRN will capitalize on future GridSphere
enhancements

• Expand support and new use case scenarios using
  AJAX
• Provide support for Web Services for Remote
  Portlets (WSRP) an OASIS standard
• Defines mechanisms for portal to consume remote
  portlets
• Enhance administration capabilities, generating
  user statistics, knowledge data mining
• Improve SSO, support for additional
  authentication schemes
• Support for rudimentary content management i.e.
  JSR 170 Content Repository API
• Develop Eclipse / IDE plugins to make portlet
  development easier