Collaborative Research: SS2-SSI: The Agave Platform: An Open Science-As-A-Service Cloud Platform For Reproducible Science

在当今数据驱动的研究环境中，轻松可靠地访问计算、存储和派生数据源的能力与用于进行实际发现的算法一样重要。地球不是在缩小，而是在数字化，美国研究人员在全球研究界保持竞争力的能力将越来越取决于他们缩短从理论到发现的时间的能力。 在过去的5年里，开源商业领域在编程语言、基础设施设计和接口开发的增长和采用方面大大超过了学术研究领域。几年前主要是学术性质的问题现在在商业世界中很常见。大数据、商业智能、远程可视化和流事件处理等术语已经从教室转移到了董事会会议室。 然而，学术项目在很大程度上无法在其校园和共享研究基础设施的背景下利用许多当今最流行和广泛使用的开源技术。最近完成的，NSF资助的，科学网关研究所规划项目揭示了许多社区落后的程度。在对超过26,000名NSF资助的PI，科学网关开发人员和高等教育领导者（即，超过85%的受访者表示，他们需要帮助来调整现有技术，以实现其网关的需求。另有80%的人表示，他们需要帮助，只是了解他们可以使用哪些技术。该项目旨在通过扩展Agave平台并使其强大，快速缩小学术和商业基础设施之间的能力差距，Agave平台是一个开放的科学即服务云平台，用于可复制的科学。从本质上讲，这个项目将允许科学家将精力集中在他们的科学上，而不是集中在他们使用的计算技术上。这个龙舌兰平台将建立在现有龙舌兰开发者API的成功基础上，目前该API为植物生物学社区的20，000多名用户提供服务。该项目包括三个明确的努力，将协同发展目前的技术成为国家研究界的可持续科学即服务平台。首先，它将通过额外的服务和管理接口扩展Agave Developer API，以创建一个有凝聚力的、自我配置的Agave平台，从而为开发人员社区提供科学即服务。其次，项目团队将与商业和学术机构合作，创建一个基于Docker容器技术的社区驱动的应用程序交换（AX），以促进应用程序的透明度，可移植性，属性和可复制性。第三，该项目将整合来自Agave生态系统项目的现有开源贡献到Agave ToGo中，Agave ToGo是多种语言和Web框架的参考科学网关集合。龙舌兰平台将通过使研究界可以利用和访问学术研究基础设施的机制现代化，使科学和工程所有领域的软件和基础设施的访问民主化。这将弥合工业和学术研究基础设施之间的差距，并允许研究人员使用新一代开源软件和技术。AX将在计算科学结果的发布和审查方式上实现更大的互操作性和问责制。通过工业合作伙伴的匹配投资，可重复性，最佳实践和严格的科学审查将成为主流，并以开放，可持续的方式作为科学过程的基本方面进行推广。Agave ToGo将使最终用户和开发人员都可以随时使用自定义网关。对于最终用户来说，它将使他们能够专注于领域科学而不是计算机科学。对于开发人员来说，它将刺激创新并增加发现的机会。当与Agave平台和应用程序交换相结合时，Agave ToGo将使新手用户能够在几分钟内创建可扩展，可复制的数字实验室，这些实验室跨越他们的办公室，商业云和国家数据中心。

In today's data-driven research environment, the ability to easily and reliably access compute, storage, and derived data sources is as much a necessity as the algorithms used to make the actual discoveries. The earth is not shrinking, it is digitizing, and the ability for US researchers to stay competitive in the global research community will increasingly be determined by their ability to reduce the time from theory to discovery. Over the last 5 years, the open source commercial sector has greatly outpaced the academic research world in its growth and adoption of programming languages, infrastructure design, and interface development. Problems that were primarily academic in nature several years ago are now common in the commercial world. Terms like big data, business intelligence, remote visualization, and streaming event processing, have moved from the classroom to the board room. However, academic projects are largely unable to take advantage of many today's most popular and widely used open source technologies within the context of their campus and shared research infrastructure. The recently completed, NSF funded, Science Gateway Institute planning project revealed just how far behind many communities are. In a survey of over 26,000 NSF-funded PIs, science gateway developers, and leaders in higher education (i.e., CIOs, CTOs, and others), over 85% of respondents said they needed help adapting existing technologies to realize the needs of their gateway. Another 80% said they needed help simply understanding what technologies were available to them. The research community doesn't just see the gap, they live it. This project seeks to quickly close the capability gap between academic and commercial infrastructure by extending and making robust the Agave Platform, an open, Science-as-a-Service cloud platform for reproducible science. Essentially, this project will allow scientists to focus their energies on their science rather than so much on the computing technologies they use. This Agave Platform will build upon the success of the existing Agave Developer APIs which currently serve over 20,000 users in the plant biology community. This project includes three well-defined efforts which will synergistically evolve the current technology into a sustainable Science-as-a-Service platform for the national research community. First,it will extend the Agave Developer APIs with additional services and management interfaces to create a cohesive, self-provisioning Agave Platform which will enable Science-as-a-Service to the developer community. Second, the project team will partner with commercial and academic institutions to create a community driven Application Exchange (AX) based on Docker container technology to facilitate application transparency, portability, attribution, and reproducibility. Third, the project will consolidate existing open source contributions from projects already with the Agave ecosystem into Agave ToGo, a collection of reference science gateways in multiple languages and web frameworks. The Agave Platform will democratize access to software and infrastructure across all areas of science and engineering by modernizing the mechanisms with which the research community can utilize and access academic research infrastructure. This will bridge the gap between industrial and academic research infrastructure and allow researchers to use a new generation of open source software and technologies. The AX will enable greater interoperability and accountability in the way computational science results are published and reviewed. Through the matching investment of industrial partners, reproducibility, best practices, and rigorous scientific review will be brought to the mainstream and promoted as a fundamental aspect of the scientific process in an open, sustainable way. Agave ToGo will make custom gateways readily available to end users and developers alike. For end users, it will empower them to focus on domain science rather than computer science. For developers, it will stimulate innovation and increase the opportunity for discovery. When combined with the Agave Platform and Application Exchange, Agave ToGo will enable novice users to create scalable, reproducible, digital labs that span their office, commercial cloud, and national data centers in a matter of minutes.