myGrid: An OMII-UK Node (mymes: myGrid middleware for e-Scientists) (Services and Middleware for e-Science)

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Progress in science is largely made through experiments, whereby the properties and behaviour of naturally occurring or manufactured artefacts are studied in a controlled environment. However, a single experiment normally only tells part of the overall story, and real improvements in understanding normally emerge by integrating and comparing the results of many experiments. As relevant experiments may be carried out at different places, be extremely numerous, and involve large amounts of data, it is likely that many potential discoveries are missed because of difficulties accessing and interpreting diverse experimental results. e-Science seeks to use computational tools to assist scientists in making sense of, rather than simply being intimidated by, the increasing amount of scientific data that is being produced in research labs throughout the world. e-Scientists need effective tools for accessing experimental data, analysing it, and for managing the results of these analyses, and linking them up with other scientists results. e-Science is a research area in its own right, in which techniques are explored for making sense of scientific data. The software used to make computers, databases, tools and people cooperate and hence run in-silico experiments is called middleware. The Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII) is an organisation that supplies middleware for scientists. It also collects it from other scientists to reengineer it to a high standard so people who didn't develop it can easily use it too. One of the long-established projects that have produced popular and useful middleware for Life Scientists (that is biologists, chemists, medics and so on) is myGrid. myGrid allows scientists to bring together existing globally shared or locally kept e-Science data sets and analyses to learn new lessons using workflows. There are over 1000 tools and data sets available that were not designed to work together. The workflows make them work together. These workflows can then be shared between scientists who want to do the same or adapt them, or want to understand how results were generated. myGrid stores the history of what happened in an in-silico experiment, why and how it was performed and by who (its provenance). It also helps manage and link up results and find other people's tools. It thus allows new hypotheses to be tested over existing experimental results, and supports scientists in managing and making sense of the results of these in-silico experiments. The alternative is to do this manually.myGrid has been very successful and has many users all over the world, in particular its workflow workbench Taverna. It turns out to be useful for many scientists other than Life Scientists. However, the software needs to be made more robust and easier to use, properly tested and documented, and extended in the light of early feedback by its users. By becoming part of the OMII-UK consortium, the myGrid middleware can looked after and developed to support its current users and many other scientists so they can confidently use it and rely on it. By close collaboration with OMII-UK: OGSA-DAI and the OMII Hub at Southampton, we can draw one each others experiences to strengthen our software engineering processes. myGrid can deliver scientists-oriented that use the low-level plumbing middleware of OMII. We will also develop distributed query technology to link our Taverna workflows with distributed queries from OGSA-DAI. In the longer term we will have a coordinated integrated roadmap of well-engineered e-Infrastructure for UK researchers and industry.