Ana Rodriguez
July 19, 2006
Presenter: Javier Munoz
Agnostic: Ana Rodriguez
Community Software Development with the Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory
By
Gregor von Laszewski, Michael Russell, Ian Foster, John Shalf,
Gabrielle Allen, Greg Daues, Jason Novotny, Edward SEidel
1. In the paper it is stated that “Cactus code, a modular simulation development framework
that allows us to encourage and leverage the development of reusable components within
the astrophysical simulation community”, can you please expand on the Cactus
Framework such as platform, limitations, etc…?
2. Are you aware of any higher-level services implemented in terms of GRAM, MDS, and/
or GridFTP?
3. Could the Web-based services for developing browser-accessible thin clients be based on
technologies other than JSP?
4. In the paper it is stated “we incorporate in our ASC a number of program repositories,
which speak Grid CVS”, can you mention a few?
5. Are you aware of any other “computational demanding application” other than Einstein’s
general relativistic wave equations that use Cactus?
6. The ASC application server uses a relational database to maintain the state of sessions;
could it be implemented in any other way? Explain.
7. Can you expand on the MDS browser developed by the Java CoG Kit?
8. What applications today(if any), use the Cactus Framework, and what problem are they
trying to solve?
9. Could the collaboratory framework be implemented using technologies other than Java?
If so, could it still be used in the same way? What would be the pros and cons of using
Java technologies vs. other alternative technologies?
10. To what domains other than computation astrophysics, could the research performed in
this paper be applied to?
