A Single Sign-On Infrastructure for Science Gateways on a Use Case for Structural Bioinformatics

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Sandra Gesing - , University of Tübingen (Author)
  • Richard Grunzke - , Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) (Author)
  • Jens Krüger - , University of Tübingen (Author)
  • Georg Birkenheuer - , Paderborn University (Author)
  • Martin Wewior - , University of Cologne (Author)
  • Patrick Schäfer - , Zuse Institute Berlin (Author)
  • Bernd Schuller - , Jülich Research Centre (Author)
  • Johannes Schuster - , Paderborn University (Author)
  • Sonja Herres-Pawlis - , Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Author)
  • Sebastian Breuers - , University of Cologne (Author)
  • Ákos Balaskó - , MTA SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control (Author)
  • Miklos Kozlovszky - , MTA SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control (Author)
  • Anna Szikszay Fabri - , MTA SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control (Author)
  • Lars Packschies - , University of Cologne (Author)
  • Peter Kacsuk - , MTA SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control (Author)
  • Dirk Blunk - , University of Cologne (Author)
  • Thomas Steinke - , Zuse Institute Berlin (Author)
  • André Brinkmann - , Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Author)
  • Gregor Fels - , Paderborn University (Author)
  • Ralph Müller-Pfefferkorn - , Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) (Author)
  • René Jäkel - , Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) (Author)
  • Oliver Kohlbacher - , University of Tübingen (Author)

Abstract

Structural bioinformatics applies computational methods to analyze and model three-dimensional molecular structures. There is a huge number of applications available to work with structural data on large scale. Using these tools on distributed computing infrastructures (DCIs), however, is often complicated due to a lack of suitable interfaces. The MoSGrid (Molecular Simulation Grid) science gateway provides an intuitive user interface to several widely-used applications for structural bioinformatics, molecular modeling, and quantum chemistry. It ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data via a granular security concept, which covers all layers of the infrastructure. The security concept applies SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and allows trust delegation from the user interface layer across the high-level middleware layer and the Grid middleware layer down to the HPC facilities. SAML assertions had to be integrated into the MoSGrid infrastructure in several places: the workflow-enabled Grid portal WS-PGRADE (Web Services Parallel Grid Runtime and Developer Environment), the gUSE (Grid User Support Environment) DCI services, and the cloud file system XtreemFS. The presented security infrastructure allows a single sign-on process to all involved DCI components and, therefore, lowers the hurdle for users to utilize large HPC infrastructures for structural bioinformatics.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)769-790
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of Grid Computing
Volume10
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2012
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 84871643232
researchoutputwizard legacy.publication#65282
ORCID /0000-0001-8719-5741/work/173053605

Keywords

Keywords

  • DCIs, Single sign-on, Structural bioinformatics, Science gateway, Security