Google Summer of Code 2012

Google summer of code

View more presentations from Kathiravelu Pradeeban.

We are having a series of GSoC awareness sessions, including the yesterday's session we had at the University of Peradeniya, and the upcoming session at the University of Jaffna on the 7th of January, 2012. These events focus on discussing GSoC and FOSS. Attached herewith is the latest version of the presentation I prepared to introduce GSoC 2012 to the students. Feel free to download and distribute, if the slow network prevents you viewing the presentation here.

As a mentor from the AbiWord community, I have come up with the slides based on our experience with the Google Summer of Code. This presentation is also influenced by my experience as a three time Google Summer of Code participant, with AbiWord (2011 as a mentor and 2009 as a student) and OMII-UK (2010 as a student). Special thanks to Martin Sevior and the AbiWord community for their valuable input at several times, in shaping this presentation up. 

Make sure to have a look at the Google Summer of Code 2012 project ideas from AbiWord.

The presentations in this blog require Shockwave Flash Plugin to display correctly. If you couldn't see it correctly, make sure you have the required plugin enabled. Feel free to drop a comment should you require further information.

SSI and Google Summer of Code - 2011

This year OMII-UK is applying for the Google Summer of Code as the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). It should also be noted that many projects including OGSA-DAI, OGSA-DMI, and GRID-SAM are coming under SSI. OMII-UK has seen many successful student projects for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, and foresees the same for this year, under the new name!

Last year I had my Google Summer of Code with OGSA-DAI (Open Grid Services Architecture - Data Access Integration), a project by The Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) and National e-Science Centre Established by a consortium of departments from the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (NeSC), which is part of OMII-UK, which has currently been evolved into SSI. It should also be noticed that EPCC and Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) are also part of Globus Alliance. Globus Alliance has also applied for Google Summer of Code 2011.

Summer of Love 2010 with OGSA-DAI

OGSA-DAI, a name that became the highlight of the year 2010. When we reach the climax of Google Summer of Code, I have to mention that it has become one of the sweetest memories of my 2010. Working with OGSA-DAI team is an amazing experience. We discuss about almost everything over the irc. It varies from Web Services to Neural Networks, Sri Lankan tea to Colombian Coffee, and Databases to Grid Computing. Apart from the scope of the Summer of Code project, I am pretty sure that Michal (my GSoC 2010 mate in OGSA-DAI) and I were able to gain a considerable amount of knowledge on OGSA-DAI as well as the technologies that are used. The super-friendly environment of OGSA-DAI team is one of the best learning platforms that I have experienced, During the last few months, while working with the presentation layers, I was also able to play with the code base, and experiment with it. 

Developing a presentation layer for OGSA-DAI is a challenging, but an interesting task to do. I started to write an article on how to write a presentation layer for OGSA-DAI, soon after I completed developing the SOAP based layer, which I later found more SOAP and CXF biased, when I started working with the ReSTful layer, which made me postpone releasing the article, as it obviously needs further modification. Officially Google Summer of Code completes by tomorrow, and of course, that just completes the direct involvement of Google. After taking a short break for my final exams, I will be back to OGSA-DAI on 6th of September. A compatible community is always a great motivation for a FOSS developer. With a strong community, OGSA-DAI becomes an ideal project for someone who is passionate on Software Development. 

At this moment, I should thank my mentors Ally Hume and Bartosz Dobrzelecki for the great support and motivation they offered throughout the project. My Special thanks goes to Mario Antonioletti for his constructive thoughts and help when I first applied to GSoC, as well as his encouragement throughout the project timeline. My sincere thanks to Mike Jackson for providing help in setting up the tests and release builds in the server, effectively managing the project. I should also thank Neil Chue Hong for administrating Google Summer of Code this year, providing updates and assistance to students and mentors from OMII-UK. Thoughts of the core team members Charaka Palansuriya, Carlos Buil Aranda, Tilaye Alemu, and Amy Krause were always fascinating and highly motivating, and the OGSA-DAI family is really a nice environment to work with. OGSA-DAI is a team with strong bonds, and we all love the cute hexapus!

GSoC with OMII-UK

Google Summer of Codes officially begins today with so much of excitement, and the students have already started their development. One more energetic summer with OMII-UK has begun with 4 students, this time. As with 2008 and 2009, this summer too projects have been chosen from the set of projects under OMII-UK. Apart from Michal and Pradeeban from the OGSA-DAI team, two more students each from Rapid and SAGA teams, make the list of participants mentored by projects under OMII-UK this time.

[GSoC 2010] Alternative Presentation Layer for OGSA-DAI

Having the vision of sharing data resources to enable collaboration, Open Grid Services Architecture Data Access and Integration (OGSA-DAI) provides access, transformation, integration, and delivery of data. It supports Apache Axis 1.4 and Globus Toolkit (gt-4.2), available to download for both the two platforms.
 
Under Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII-UK), an alternative presentation layer using Apache CXF instead of the outdated Axis which is currently used, is discussed as a project for Google Summer of Codes 2010, which I found very interesting for this summer.  

Project Proposal

Project Mentor: Ally Hume

OGSA-DAI has a layered architecture consists of the data layer, business logic layer, presentation layer, and client layer, when considering the architecture in bottom-up. Presentation layer encapsulates the required functionalities to expose the data service resources using the web service interfaces. Presentation layer currently consists of two realization, where each of them have  a WSDL that describes the interface. 

Both the realizations are compliant with Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF), and communicate with the respective client stubs using SOAP over HTTP. Hence design and implementation of an alternative RESTful presentation layer using CXF JAX-RS (The Java API for RESTful Web Services) is also included in this project, as it will be lightweight and best for bespoke clients.

This seems an interesting initiative as the performance and the simplicity will be highly improved. I have seen reasonable comparison of Axis 2 and CXF [1], [2], though they must be outdated by this time.

[1] Technical Notes on OGSA-DAI
[2] Resource on writing a presentation layer
[3] OGSA-DAI Tutorial
[4] FAQ: OGSA-DAI WSI-specific (Based on Axis 1.4 web service stack)
[5] FAQ: OGSA-DAI WSRF-specific (Based on the globus toolkit)
[6] General FAQ
[7] Known Problems
[8] Binary Transfer Benchmarks 
[9] GSoC 2010 Announcement in OGSA-DAI blog
[10] Google Summer of Code 2010 site