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4.4Selecting new communities: Egee Generic Applications Advisory Panel

NA4 participates to all outreach actions but its specific mandate is to make sure EGEE has a well balanced and broad contribution of communities from all different users/application areas including new scientific areas. In order to identify the most relevant portfolio for deployment on EGEE, a first step is to classify applications according to the groups from which they originate:

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  "Pilot" applications are used to test EGEE middleware and to evaluate performances. The two pilot application areas are Biomedical sciences and high energy Physics application. They have started their deployment on day 1.    
  
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  "Internal" applications come from within the project in the sense that they involve EGEE partners in collaboration with institutes external to EGEE.
  
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  "External" applications. These applications come from collaborations external to EGEE and need support for deployment on EGEE.
  

The three categories of applications may involve public, private or public/private consortia. Internal applications are often deployed at a national or regional level and are therefore extremely dependent on interoperability between EGEE and national initiatives. Groups deploying these applications have already a good expertise without need of NA4 support. External applications are much more dependent on NA4 support.

The EGEE Generic Applications Advisory Panel (EGAAP) is in charge of facilitating the identification and selection of potential new applications on the EGEE infrastructure. It gives advice to NA4 on the allocation of its resources to that effect. It collects the necessary information about the application candidates, identify the needs to achieve this goal and make recommendations to that effect to:

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  the NA4 management for allocation of the NA4 resources to the applications which need them;
  
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  the EGEE Project Execution Board where the technical consequences of this new deployment will be evaluated. In the case where the application impact is deemed very important for EGEE, the EGEE Project Management Board will be notified.
  

The EGEE Generic Applications Advisory Panel uses the following criteria to make its recommendations to NA4:

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  scientific interest of the proposed work, with particular emphasis on the grid added-value;
  
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  added value for EGEE to have such an application running on its infrastructure. This includes broad/equal distribution of technical areas that are using EGEE ;
  
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  coordination of the community and distribution (coverage) over Europe;
  
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  grid-awareness of this community;
  
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  minimum requirement that a small team followed the EGEE training;
  
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  dedication of the community to this application;
  
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  agreement to the various EGEE policies and especially the security and resources allocation policies.
  

Besides recommending new applications for deployment on EGEE, EGAAP hears regular reports from the deployed applications on the EGEE infrastructure. These reports allow evaluating technical deployment but also community involvement and integration.

In the case of industrial applications, the EGEE Generic Applications Advisory Panel can require input from the EGEE Industry Forum.

The selection panel is formed of 7 nominated members in addition to ex-officio members; 2 members designated by the NA4 team leader from within the EGEE project and 5 members designated by the NA4 team leader from a list of nominees outside the EGEE project suggested by members of the EGEE Project Management Board. The chair is chosen among these 8 members by the NA4 team leader, in consultation with the EGEE management. The membership term is one year, renewable once.

The ex-officio members are the NA4 team leader, NA4 generic applications coordinator, NA4 Industry Forum coordinator, EGEE technical director and EGEE project director. The EGAAP will meet at least twice a year.

Following EGAAP recommendation and approval by the Project Management Board, NA4 management identifies resources allocated to the new applications and writes a small Memorandum of Understanding with new applications. NA4 management has also to follow-up on application deployment. The involvement of NA2 and NA3 is also welcome in this follow-up process.

5New communities integration

5.1Introduction

Once new communities are identified, their integration involves the following tasks:

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  provide the necessary training to the community application developers
  
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  if needed, allocate trained personnel to each new selected community to support development and production use of its applications on the EGEE infrastructure;
  
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  develop and disseminate appropriate information proactively addressing the needs of new user communities;
  
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  identify computing resources for new application deployment, including the ones brought by the new community;
  
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  monitor the integration process and optimize cross-application fertilization to define common application interfaces and tools;
  
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  assimilate and evaluate records of the work and provide information to the dissemination, middleware and management activities.
  

To achieve these goals, NA4 has to work in close cooperation with the other project activities:

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  training issues are to be addressed with NA3 while resource and service deployments are to be addressed with SA1. A joint NA4/SA1 working group has been set up to address issues related to new VO acceptance and deployment as well as policy issues, security, confidentiality, access. For each new application this group will discuss the best mapping to VOs, and the practical issues of getting new resources into EGEE;
  

Issues addressed within NA4 are related to the monitoring of integration progress, cross application fertilization and set-up of information channels from the new applications to the rest of the project.

The common policies defined with NA3 and SA1 to address training, resource and service deployments are described below as well as the tools to develop collaboration between scientific communities within NA4.