High-Performance Scientific Computing for the Masses: Developing Secure Grid Portals for Scientific Workflows

We present a web-based Grid job submission system which combines open-source software components and available system services freeing developers from having to deal with Grid middleware, credential management and user authentication. Instead, a Short Lived Credential Service provides the necessary user certificates, while Grisu libraries, developed by the Australian Research Collaboration Service, handle Grid-related tasks such as job submission and remote file operations. Thus portal developers can focus on modeling domain-specific workflows and create high-level and easy to use interfaces for scientists who want to run and monitor large simulations. This paper explains the components and demonstrates how we use the system in two submission portals for separate applications.