mc2 Platform, the Science Gateway Engine
mc2 is a platform that allows scientific application developers to rapidly implement and launch new science gateways. mc2 implements a gateway engine that can be configured by a small set of XML files. Such files completely define the desired functionality of a specific science gateway, which can be provided to the user through either Web-based or command-line interfaces. The gateway engine also offers other features not commonly found in related technologies, such as file sharing, data provenance tracking, and restricted anonymous access to underlying computational resources.
From the point of view of a scientific application developer, mc2 is a simple (Web) application that needs an ordinary Java Virtual Machine (and also a Servlet container in the case of Web-based interfaces) for its deployment. As a minimum, the mc2 platform creates instances of science gateways that offer user interfaces for:
- Uploading, downloading, viewing and editing files in the project area of the users.
- Submitting experiments, including validation tips on how to fill out the required experiment parameters.
- Monitoring experiments, indicating their unique identifiers, the computational resources in which the experiments are running, and when the latter are submitted, among other information.
Currently, the mc2 platform is built upon the basic services for access control (OpenBus), execution management (OpenDreams) and data management (ProjectService) provided by the CSGrid middleware.