Sage on BalticGrid

A presentation was made on the BalticGrid 2nd All Hands Meeting in Riga, Latvia on 12-14 May 2009.
As the result Sage was recommended for BalticGrid gLite-sites as a service that could be installed by all administrators. You can follow the progress of SAGE installations on http://infosite.balticgrid.org/ looking up for SAGE in software environment.
The chosen tools from RESPECT program were confirmed to be appropriate for the task of SAGE's gridification.
Many of the colleagues have already used Sage for their purposes and the proposal to use Sage on Grid was accepted at once.

The next thing to be done is to create an rpm package for automatic installation of SAGE on SL4.7 disabled of web server functionality.
More about the first TODOs is posted to the sage-devel mailing list here:

SAGE-WN distribution for cluster worker node

Sage for Scientific Grid

So, to start with I'd like to describe my ideas about gridification of Sage.

This task is a very common one nowadays but it is a challenge for me.

The very first thing I'm asking myself is how to simplify this gridification.
There are lots of tools that can be used at the moment and that is why the biggest question comes in mind: which one to use ?
I discovered a very useful page on EGEE site here: http://technical.eu-egee.org/index.php?id=290

This is "The RESPECT program":

The RESPECT program (Recommended External Software for EGEE CommuniTies) aims to publicize grid software and services that work well in concert with the EGEE gLite software and thereby :

* Expand the functionality of the grid infrastructure for users,
* Reduce duplicated development when porting applications, and
* Speed the porting of new application to the grid.

So everyone can choose the right proven tools which are used in other projects.
From the point of gridification task the two are of a special interest:

Ganga http://ganga.web.cern.ch/ganga/

Ganga is an easy-to-use frontend for job definition and management, implemented in Python. Ganga allows trivial switching between testing on a local batch system and large-scale processing on Grid resources. Ganga is readily extended and customised to meet the needs of different user communities.

DIANE http://cern.ch/diane

DIANE is a lightweight distributed framework for parallel scientific applications in master-worker model. It assumes that a job may be split into a number of independent tasks which is a typical case in many scientific applications. The DIANE framework takes care of all synchronization, communication and workflow management details on behalf of the application.

This two I'm choosing for the basis and going to describe them in more detail later.
Another two projects are also very interesting:

i2glogin http://www.gup.uni-linz.ac.at/i2glogin

i2glogin is a tool that enables interactive communication between a grid job and the user. The tool opens a fast, secure channel between the job and the user interface allowing, for example, debugging of the remote environment, application steering, or remote visualization.

Virtual Control Room

The VCR is an open source grid portal based on GridSphere and Web 2.0 technologies. The VCR fully supports the gLite middleware and Instrument Elements. The portal can be easily installed and either used as it is or customized to implement specific Virtual Research Environments. A powerful scripting environment and an application manager allow simplified and transparent access to the infrastructure to users. Interactive application support and a powerful tunneling technique allow the integration of both gridified and un-gridified applications in a single environment. The native integration of collaboration tools (eLogbook, Skype, EVO, etc.) makes the VCR a unique collaboration platform. The VCR is suitable for any kind of scientific or business application and for the associated user communities.

No sense to copy/paste further information about this tools. The interested reader will follow the weblinks provided.

To express everything at once I should say that Sage could become the default mathematical software for scientists, ex. in HEP, if it fully utilizes Grid functionality. I hope someday SAGE is going to replace "the-so-loved" Mathematica providing efficient and diverse algorithms that are used on the frontier of science.
To say more, SAGE Math Server could also become a collaboration platform for scientists doing mathematical computations.

I have looked through the docs and presentations of DIANE and Ganga. My next post will be about the possibilities they could provide to SAGE.

In addition, I'm preparing a presentation for BalticGrid-II project meeting that will take place very soon on 12-14 May, 2009. I hope to clarify many things after this event.

About SageWorld project

I shall mainly return to this subject later.

Here we can discuss in comments section anything related to the project itself.

For now I simply wish to answer all kinds of questions to myself and express hope that a collective wisdom and knowledge could guide me in the right direction.

You can help by answering questions and commenting on the subjects you understand, especially technical issues.

The place for discussions is also in sage-support and sage-devel mailing lists.

In the meantime, I want to contribute to the Sage project by enhancing SAGE's features and teaching it Grid language with gLite dialect.

Regards,
Serge

What is SageWorld ?

SageWorld is a mathematical space where everyone can create a mathematical object according to the nature of space that has its laws and its constants as in the real world.

The object you create can be manipulated in a general mathematical way using SAGE as the primary tool and the gateway.

As long as SAGE can compute your object according to a specific SageWorld you can do with it everything you like.

The interesting part begins when someone else enters your SageWorld and creates his object in that space. Now you have two options: whether you live and grow in the SageWorld peacefully or you start to find the way to constrain the growing and movement of the intruder's object. Here you've got to have a mathematical wisdom and skill to make it a real time scenario and action. Of course you can both build up a space and wait for another alien but that is up to sages to think of what to do.

That is just an idea that I'd like to implement in SAGE and I think the tools for that already exist.

Comments are welcome.

About SageWorldMath blog

This blog has been created by Serge A. Salamanka, a software engineer at UIIP NASB and a student of MMF at BSU, for logging creative ideas about playing mathematics with SAGE on Grid and developing a sage world of mathematics where you can create your objects and compete for mathematical space.

SageWorld blog created

For tracing ideas ...

Follow the white python.