BIRN Portal Overview
Jason Novotny / Ramil Manansala / Thien Nguyen
BIRN Portal Architect
BIRN Coordinating Center
Portals & Portlets 2006
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
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
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/applicatio
ns provided by
other portals
 Difficult for other
project members to
develop remotely
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
BIRN Portal based on GridSphere
 Takes
advantage of
core
GridSphere
portlets, user
management,
security
 BIRN-CC
developed
portlets for
data access,
collaboration
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
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)
 User’s 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 user’s
credential for use from the portal
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
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
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
BIRN Portal Architecture
Advanced Grid Middleware Portlets
Generic
Portlets
Data
Grid Security
Management
Management
(SRB)
(GAMA)
BIRN
Collaborative
Grid Middleware
Generic Portal
Grid Portlets
portlets
pages /
portlets
GridSphere Portal / Portlet container / Core portlets
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 Huntington’s Project
 NIH-CIT
• NDAR Autism Project and Pediatric MR database
 MGH
• Morphometry BIRN
GridSphere / BIRN collaborations
 Working with other projects in a UC San Diego wide
portals technology group
• Telescience R&D 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
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
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