Information Services FAQ
From TeraGrid Wiki
What are TeraGrid Information Services?
TeraGrid information services are an integrated collection of web services (in the broadest sense) that publish information about the capabilities (systems, software, and services) available to the TeraGrid user community.
TeraGrid Information Services defines the standards and services that that enable TeraGrid resource and service providers to publish and advertise their offerings, via software interfaces, to the user community. The TeraGrid's user portal, user documentation, science gateways, and user applications can query information services software interfaces to discover information about the TeraGrid.
What information is in information services?
Some examples of the information currently available in information services:
- What resource providers, and compute and storage resources are part of the TeraGrid
- What TeraGrid coordinated software, like compilers, math libraries, and grid tools are available on each resource
- How users can access coordinated software
- What TeraGrid coordinated services, like GridFTP, SRB, GSI OpenSSH, and GRAM are available on each resource
- How users can access coordinated services
- What Science Gateways have interfaces to TeraGrid resources
- How busy (%) are TeraGrid compute resources
The Information Services Production Content page has a complete list of the information currently available in production.
How are information services different than other information delivery systems?
Information services focuses on 3 areas:
- defining the standard TeraGrid schemas that resource and service providers use to advertise their offerings,
- provide resource and service providers the software for advertising their offerings,
- operate a central service where the collective offerings of TeraGrid service and resource providers can be aggregated, indexed, and re-published thru software interfaces for use by other TeraGrid software systems.
In other words, Information Services focuses on moving and aggregation information for use by software (and indirectly by TeraGrid users).
By contrast, TeraGrid documentation (http://www.teragrid.org), the user portal (http://portal.teragrid.org) publish information in human consumable form, i.e. as web pages and content, directly for users. TeraGrid documentation and the user portal in fact access and publish information services content for users.
How can users access information services content?
The primary way for users to access information services content is using TeraGrid user documentation and the User Portal.
Advanced users and developers can also access information services content thru software interfaces.
Anyone can also download and use the tginfo command line tool from http://info.teragrid.org/tginfo.
How do I request new information services content?
If you need additional information about the TeraGrid infrastructure in a software consumable form, and it doesn't appear that that information is currently published thru information services, please e-mail your "Information Services request" to help@teragrid.org.
How reliable and scalable are TeraGrid information services?
TeraGrid integrated information services were designed to offer both advanced WS/SOAP and simple WS/REST information access interfaces. The simple information access interfaces were also designed to be extremely fast and scalable. They are suitable for live interactive use by both users and applications.
The TeraGrid operates several central information services servers that aggregate and index the information from all other TeraGrid service providers. These central servers are fully redundant and configured to achive high availability (less that 8 hours of planned and un-planned downtime a year).
Where can I learn more about TeraGrid Information Services?
The Information Services Public Documentation page includes links to other user and developer documentation and resources.
The http://info.teragrid.org/ web site is home for information services and also includes additional documentation.
