Distributed Application Runtime Environment (DARE): A Standards-based Middleware Framework for Science-Gateways

Gateways have been able to provide efficient and simplified access to distributed and high-performance computing resources. Gateways have been shown to support many common and advanced requirements, as well as proving successful as a shared access mode to production cyberinfrastructure such as the TG/XSEDE. There are two primary challenges in the design of effective and broadly-usable gateways: the first revolves around the creation of interfaces that catpure existing and future usage modes so as to support desired scientific investigation. The second challenge and the focus of this paper, is concerned about the requirement to integrate the user-interfaces with computational resources and specialized cyberinfrastructure in an interoperable, extensible and scalable fashion. Currently, there does not exist a commonly usable middleware to that enables seamless integration of different gateways to a range of distributed and high-performance infrastructures. The development of multiple similar gateways that can work over a range of production cyberinfrastructures, usage modes and application requirements is not scalable without a effective and extensible middleware. Some of the challenges that make using production cyberinfrastructure as a collective resource difficult are also responsible for the absence of middleware that enables multiple gateways to utilize the collective capabilities. We introduce the SAGA-based, Distributed Application Runtime Environment (DARE) framework, using which gateways that seamlessly and effectively utilize scalable distributed infrastructure can be built. We discuss the architecture of DARE-based gateways, and show using several different prototypes—DARE-HTHP, DARE-NGS, how gateways can be constructed by utilizing the DARE middleware framework.