Apache Airavata Sharing Service: A Tool for Enabling User Collaboration in Science Gateways

Science Gateways provide user environments and a set of supporting services that help researchers make effective and enhanced use of a diverse set of computing, storage, and related resources. Gateways provide the services and tools users require to enable their scientific exploration, which includes tasks such as running computer simulations or performing data analysis. Historically gateways have been constructed to support the workflow of individual users, but collaboration between users has become an increasingly important part of the discovery process. This trend has created a driving need for gateways to support data sharing between users. For example, a chemistry research group may want to run simulations collaboratively, analyze experimental data or tune parameter studies based on simulation output generated by peers, whether as a default capability, or through explicit creation of sharing privileges. As another example, students in a classroom setting may be required to share their simulation output or data analysis results with the instructor. However most existing gateways (including the popularly used XSEDE gateways SEAGrid, Ultrascan, CIPRES, and NSG), do not support direct data sharing, so users have to handle these collaborations outside the gateway environment. Given the importance of collaboration in current scientific practice, user collaboration should be a prime consideration in building science gateways. In this work, we present design considerations and implementation of a generic model that can be used to describe and handle a diverse set of user collaboration use cases that arise in gateways, based on general requirements gathered from the SEAGrid, CIPRES, and NSG gateways. We then describe the integration of this sharing service into these gateways. Though the model and the system were tested and used in the context of Science Gateways, the concepts are universally applicable to any domain, and the service can support data sharing in a wide variety of use cases.