Calling Application Developers
from science to the arts, applications are gateways to the infrastructure
If you are involved in developing applications that enable researchers to interact with the EGI infrastructure then we would very much like to hear from you now. Application developers play a crucial role in the process of bringing researchers and the e-infrasturcture together. Whilst some users are happy, indeed prefer, to interact with the grid middleware through a command line interface, many more typically use gateways, workflow and job submission managers and other such applications which, to varying degrees, enable researchers to operate in a manner that is more closely aligned to their own particular domain-specific skillsets. As we seek to expand and broaden the user-base of the EGI e-infrastructure, then it is a safe bet that the majority of these new users will also make use of such tools.
The User Community Support team provides a number of tools to support this process. These include the Applications Database (AppDb), the VO monitoring and management applications and the training-related resources. Access to these resources together with supporting information is available on the UCST web pages. Furthermore, in the near future these applications to enhance the work of application developers will be available as portlets or ‘apps’ that can be embedded in to websites, portals and other gateways including smart phones. This will be of interest to both communities and NGIs who want to present these resources in their own environment, structured to the needs of their specialist disciples or countries.
In order to drive this process forward we want to hear from application developers. We know about many of these from the information stored in the Applications Database but we know that not all related application teams have stored data about their application. We are currently contacting the teams responsible for those applications known to us but we would welcome contact from others. So, if you are a user and have a preferred application that enables you to make use of the infrastructure then please also get in touch to ensure that the developer in question is on our list and ready to receive support and help in the weeks and months ahead. To get in touch email us at ucst@egi.eu or simply submit your application to the AppDb directly (https://appdb.egi.eu) and we will contact you. What could be simpler?
