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about and troubleshoot their problems, or send their feedback, comments, sug-
gestions, and feature requests regarding the gateway. It may also be used as a
collaboration facility where users can discuss the methods and share their results
with others.
Periodic backups of the gateway server are performed every week, where gUSE
and Liferay databases together with the gUSE installation directory are saved. This
directory contains all back-end and front-end services, Apache Tomcat and Liferay
installations, temporary user
files, and deployed SSF portlets. In addition, before
upgrading gUSE, the server is backed up to be able to quickly restore the previous
version in case of a failure.
12.5 Conclusions
SSS-Gateway, developed by customising the gUSE framework, is available at
http://seismo.ceng.metu.edu.tr
.
It successfully meets the needs of seismology for
statistical tools and models, most of which are computing and data intensive, by
presenting web-based services supported by high-capacity DCIs. The gateway
offers a wide range of facilities at different skill levels.
Though its expert service level can be used to reach all the portlets of
WS-PGRADE/gUSE, in addition to the implemented SSFs, it does not aim to provide
general-purpose services to users. For general-purpose use, a WS-PGRADE/gUSE
instance has been operated for the Turkish Grid community.
With the use of SSS-Gateway, seismology researchers no longer have to develop
their own programs, use licensed software packages, or download, compile, and try
open-source utilities. They can easily access and use the services of this science
gateway on the web. For example, users can select a site through the interactive
map interface and get the seismic hazard probability map produced for that site on
the fly. This task might take days otherwise to
find or develop an appropriate
software tool implementing the SHA models of choice, to execute it several times to
cover the site and related sources, then to combine and analyse their results, and
finally to draw the map. Moreover, a logic-tree analysis can be run to try many
different parameters of a hazard assessment model with a single click on this
gateway. Also, highly skilled users can easily code or even prepare complex
workflows to test their own approaches of applying models. All these are executed
on the DCIs for which the user presents a certi
cate or has an account. For those
(possibly nonacademic) users with no DCI certi
cate, use of the cloud would be a
solution.
In spite of the rich set of facilities held by SSS-Gateway, it is fairly a straight-
forward process to set up and operate it. For instance, once a model is implemented,
it can be as fast as just hours to put the code into a workflow structure. Next, it takes
only a couple of days to develop a portlet on the average, even though some of
them are sophisticated with many GUI elements. Thanks to the installation wizard
and upgrade manuals, an installation or upgrade is completed typically in a single
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