HR: 1330h
AN: ED32C-1218    [PDF]
TI: Web Services Provide Access to SCEC Scientific Research Application Software
AU: Gupta, N
EM: niting@usc.edu
AF: SCEC, Dept. Earth Sciences, Univ. Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AU: Gupta, V
EM: vgupta@usc.edu
AF: SCEC, Dept. Earth Sciences, Univ. Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AU: * Okaya, D
EM: okaya@usc.edu
AF: Univ. So. California, Dept. Earth Sciences, USC, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AU: Kamb, L
EM: linus@iris.washington.edu
AF: IRIS DMS, 1408 NE 45 St., Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98105 United States
AU: Maechling, P
EM: maechlin@usc.edu
AF: SCEC, Dept. Earth Sciences, Univ. Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0740 United States
AB: Web services offer scientific communities a new paradigm for sharing research codes and communicating results. While there are formal technical definitions of what constitutes a web service, for a user community such as the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), we may conceptually consider a web service to be functionality provided on-demand by an application which is run on a remote computer located elsewhere on the Internet. The value of a web service is that it can (1) run a scientific code without the user needing to install and learn the intricacies of running the code; (2) provide the technical framework which allows a user's computer to talk to the remote computer which performs the service; (3) provide the computational resources to run the code; and (4) bundle several analysis steps and provide the end results in digital or (post-processed) graphical form. Within an NSF-sponsored ITR project coordinated by SCEC, we are constructing web services using architectural protocols and programming languages (e.g., Java). However, because the SCEC community has a rich pool of scientific research software (written in traditional languages such as C and FORTRAN), we also emphasize making existing scientific codes available by constructing web service frameworks which wrap around and directly run these codes. In doing so we attempt to broaden community usage of these codes. Web service wrapping of a scientific code can be done using a "web servlet" construction or by using a SOAP/WSDL-based framework. This latter approach is widely adopted in IT circles although it is subject to rapid evolution. Our wrapping framework attempts to "honor" the original codes with as little modification as is possible. For versatility we identify three methods of user access: (A) a web-based GUI (written in HTML and/or Java applets); (B) a Linux/OSX/UNIX command line "initiator" utility (shell-scriptable); and (C) direct access from within any Java application (and with the correct API interface from within C++ and/or C/Fortran). This poster presentation will provide descriptions of the following selected web services and their origin as scientific application codes: 3D community velocity models for Southern California, geocoordinate conversions (latitude/longitude to UTM), execution of GMT graphical scripts, data format conversions (Gocad to Matlab format), and implementation of Seismic Hazard Analysis application programs that calculate hazard curve and hazard map data sets.
DE: 6605 Education
DE: 7223 Seismic hazard assessment and prediction
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting