Edinburgh Data-Intensive Research - endUser

Screencast: Rapid Portals for Seismological Waveform Data

Jano.van.Hemert — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:44:33 +0000

Welcome to the RapidSeis demo. This portal was created using Rapid and enables the use of Seismic Data eXplorer within the web portal of the Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology.

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Tutorial for Rapid

Jano.van.Hemert — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:28:41 +0000

This brief tutorial covers the installation of Rapid and the components it depends on. It explains how to get a simple portlet running and then increases the complexity of this portlet to include more functionality by exploiting Rapid's features.

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Attachment	Size
RapidTutorial-20090908.pdf	290.14 KB

RapidSeis Workshop

Jano.van.Hemert — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:12:05 +0000

At the meeting we will present the result of the RapidSeis project, a collaboration between ORFEUS, the UK National e-Science Centre and the University of Liverpool. Over the past six months, this project has created a system that facilitates running waveform analysis on data from ORFEUS where the computation is performed on remote compute resources provided by the University of Liverpool. The system is used via a secure web portal, which means no software needs to be installed by end-users; they only need access to a common web browser. Even visualization will be embedded in the portal.

The portal enables two modes of operation. First, it allows registered users to choose an analysis from a catalogue of analyses and then run this analysis on data chosen from the data hosted by ORFEUS. Second, it enables more advanced users to create new analyses and add these to the catalogue for others to use.

November 12th
• 13:00 Welcome/Lunch in the staff common room, Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences.
• 14:00 - 14:30 Luca Trani
• 14:30 - 15:00 Robert Barsch
• 15:00 - 15:30 Marco Olivieri
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break
• 16:00 -16:30 Jano van Hemert
• 16:30 - 17:00 Paul Denton
18:30 Meet in the Philharmonic Pub for drinks, followed by dinner at 20:00 at Gusto Restaurant at the Albert Dock: http://www.gustorestaurants.uk.com/restaurants/gusto-liverpool

November 13th
• 09:00 - 10:45 RapidSeis - Andy Heath, Jos Koetsier, Luca Trani
10:45 - 11.15 Coffee break
• 11:15 - 12:30 RapidSeis
12.30 Lunch
• 14:00 Wrap up
15:00 Finish

Attendees (from left to right in the picture): Moritz Beyreuther (LMU), Robert Barsch (LMU), Paul Denton (BGS), Jano van Hemert (NeSC), Andreas Rietbrock (Liverpool), Andy Heath (Liverpool),Marco Olivieri (ETHZ), Alessandro Spinuso (Orfeus - facsimile), Luca Trani (Orfeus), Alexandra Lodge (Liverpool), Jos Koetsier (NeSC), Linus Kamb (EMSC)

Location:

Department of Earth & Ocean Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK

Dates:

12 Nov 2009 to 13 Nov 2009

Web site:

http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~aeh/Meetings/rapidseisws.htm

Research topics:

Data-intensive computing

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JISC:

Rapid portals improve teaching in practical sessions

Jano.van.Hemert — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:28:59 +0000

Written by Nick Funnel (2nd year PhD in the School of Chemistry).

The lab has been much easier to teach this year.

Last year the students had to edit Z-matrices for geometry optimization calculations, which have to be located from separate files and navigate between a PC and a workstation. This also required them to deal with UNIX in order to complete the lab. The vast majority of students struggled, having never dealt with issues like this before, and a significant proportion of these students were unhappy just using computers in general.

As a result, most of the calculations that were submitted did not work—most likely due to an input error but these were difficult to spot. Eventually, the answers often had to be provided to the student from a calculation that been previously run. Sorting out these problems was very time consuming and so there was no time to effectively teach the students the chemical theory behind the experiment and most students saw it as a waste of time.

This year, most of these problems have been solved—students no longer have to manage lots of separate files or use UNIX. Although the students still have to edit Z-matrices, there are clear instructions accompanying them and there is more time to explain the format of them to the student.

So far there has been no problem running any of the calculations. Students are working from one webpage and by effectively ‘clicking next’ all the time they are given more time to think about the theory behind what they are doing rather than just trying to get the calculations to run.

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Rapid prevents a disaster in the classroom

Jano.van.Hemert — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:34:04 +0000

For the first time, chemists at the University of Edinburgh are using a portal developed with Rapid to teach 140 undergraduates computational chemistry.

The first week of the semester disaster struck, the primary server with all the software died. A new server was brought in, but its configuration is different and that would have meant lecture notes had to be altered, instructers would have to be briefed and practical sessions would have to be rescheduled.

Now for the good news. The portal was adjusted, using Rapid, in a few hours to match the new configuration. As the instructors and students were used to the portal, nothing bad happened. They kept going, blissfully unaware of what happened.

This is not the primary selling point of our technology, but definitely something we will include in our next sales pitch.

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Rapid Tutorial at Advanced Distributed Services Summer School

Jano.van.Hemert — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:52:34 +0000

Speaker(s):

Jos.Koetsier

Presentation Type:

tutorial

Tutorial on how to create a basic portlet with Rapid, which includes:

installation of required software
authentication to data and compute resources through username and password
transportation of data before and results after computation
use of rich user interface elements, such as a file browser and job monitoring
submitting the job to another computer

Date and time:

Thursday, 10 September, 2009 - 09:00

Location:

Advanced Distributed Services Summer School 2009, Coseners House, near Oxford

Web site:

http://www.iceage-eu.org/adsss09/

Projects:

JISC:

Happy end user of Rapid gives praise

Jano.van.Hemert — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:29:11 +0000

"Just wanted to say that the Jython plugin tag in the new Rapid version is really useful. I have just started playing with it and have managed to create a portlet that gets the batch job lists back from various hosts and also now enables you to select a job using a radio button and then delete it or view it in more detail - no hack scripts required! I can also dynamically set the batch system commands so I can handle hosts that use SGE, PBS ot LoadLeveller with no external input required.

Right, I am now off to update the new cp2k HPCx portlet so it uses Jython rather than scripts to submit jobs.

Excellent work Jos!"

Topic of this submission:

JISC:

Rapid Portals for Seismological Waveform Data

Jano.van.Hemert — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:41:20 +0000

Speaker(s):

Jano.van.Hemert

Presentation Type:

talk

We explain how new e-science technology can be used to make modern seismology analyses available via web browsers. These analyses will be run on local compute clusters. The users of the analysis packages do not have to be aware of any of the underlying e-infrastructure; they focus on the domain-specific task at hand.

Date and time:

Wednesday, 1 July, 2009 - 15:00

Location:

NERIES Annual Meeting 2009, Hotel Mitland, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Web site:

http://www.neries-eu.org/?subpage=/projectweb/portalproject/Annual%2520Meeting%2…

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