SPURport: Grid Portal for earthquake engineering simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a successful implementation of the SPURport, a prototype Grid Portal for the earthquake engineering community. The portal eliminates the need for installing and maintaining simulation software by the end user. However, the portal infrastructure is application-neutral and can be used as a blueprint for developing portals for other communities. It provides seamless access to remote resources and supports the incorporation of legacy applications. It uses XML-based metadata extensively, which enables the introduction of high-level middle-tier services that aggregate and coordinate lower-level services provided by the Globus toolkit. For example, the high level Job Submission Service orchestrates resolution of logical entities, file transfers, and data streaming prior to actual job submission, hiding these activities from the end user. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.