Some ideas for a tighter integration of Sci-GaIA, TANDEM and MAGIC services

[roberto_barbera]

During the Sci-GaIA Workshop on Open Science and the UbuntuNet Connect 2015 Conference I thought a lot about how to better integrate the services of MAGIC, Sci-GaIA and TANDEM projects and here are some first ideas.

1. Register the Colaboratorios (both WACREN's and those installed in the MAGIC region) as Service Providers of the GrIDP "catch-all" federation whose IdPs count several thousands of potential users; one of those IdPs is the "catch-all" one operated by RedClara
2. Include in the Colaboratorio(s) two new sections:
   1. One which would allow users to upload open access documents & data on the Sci-GaIA Open Access Repository and assign PIDs/DOIs to them; we would create different PID/DOI "sub-prefixes" so that citable links to documents and data would be easily associated to the various projects;
   2. One which would allow users to seamlessly run the applications integrated in the Africa Grid Science Gateway; we could start with "general purpose" ones, such as Octave or R, and then with more specific ones, according to the preferences of the user in the Colaboratorio, e.g. Abinit, Gromacs, ClustalW, etc.
   3. Include the WACREN Colaboratorio as one of the services integrated in the Africa Grid Science Gateway.

Please, have a look at the above ideas and let me know if you agree and want to proceed further. I also look forward to receiving additional ideas from all of you.

[brucellino]

Thanks @roberto_barbera for the suggestions and ideas.

Include in the Colaboratorio(s) two new sections:

where are these collaboratorio's currently ? I mean is there a URL which we can look at ? @DamienAlline_143b Can you suggest some links to how this works and who is working on it ? For those who read this post later, they may have no idea about what we are talking about

I would add to @roberto_barbera's suggested services, this discussion forum too. We can integration at a few levels, but since i'm not sure how Collaboratio works or even what it is, I can't comment further.

[roberto_barbera]

Hi @brucellino,

The WACREN Colaboratorio is reachable at

http://community.wacren.net

but unfortunately, no Colaboratorio has a public webpage. You have to sign in to see its contents. This is why I'm asking to register WACREN's one in GrIDP.

Some public information is however available here

http://www.redclara.net/index.php/en/#tab2-colaboratorio

and here

https://www.terena.org/activities/tf-cpr/pastmeetings/porto2015/presentations/ColaboratioTNC2015.pdf

[brucellino]

Some public information is however available here

http://www.redclara.net/index.php/en/#tab2-colaboratorio

Ok, this quotes some services that are included in the suite. However, it would be really nice to know how this thing is built so we can consider the feasibility of integrating other services into it. My personal philosophy as most know is that interoperation is better than integration, so understanding the the way Collaboratio exposes itself to the services it contains is important.

It seems to me that Collaboratio is a kind of VRE, and we are then proposing to add components to it which would bring further functionality ?

More importantly, we need a motivation for working on interoperation, and this can only come from user communities. I would like to know if there are any user communities within our scope which are using Collaboratio who we can rely on for feedback and co-design if possible. @OmoOaiya ? @DamienAlline_143b ? Anyone from TANDEM ?

[roberto_barbera]

Hi @brucellino,

You're right when you say that we need "bottom-up" user-driven motivations for the inter-operation. On the other hand, as you can see in the table below, with its concertation allocations, the EC is pushing us "top-down" to collaborate among ourselves.

In this thread we are only discussing collaboration among Sci-GaIA, TANDEM and MAGIC. We will soon need to extend the discussion to VI-SEEM and RDA.

[brucellino]

the EC is pushing us "top-down" to collaborate among ourselves.

Point taken. At the end of the day though, we still need others to vouch for our work. We need remove barriers to collaboration with the projects in our column, which we are doing, but this won't magically create a user community And it's that user community's needs which need to drive our service development. So, at the very least, I suggest we talk to the ones that we are supporting.

If we are pushed to work in a more integrated way, then this is great - we wanted to do this anyway as soon as we heard that the projects had been funded, but just integrating things for the sake of it is not going to make anyone happy.

On the other hand, I had a question - why can't we integrate some of the Collaboratio tools into the Science Gateway ? Again, the two questions we should have answers to whenever we bring up "integrations" are :

1. Who wants this ?
2. Is this possible ?

in that order. If nobody wants it, let's not waste time developing it.