Rapid: Giving Computational Science a Friendly Face

Rapid is a cost-effective and efficient way of designing and delivering portal interfaces to tasks that require remote compute resources. The aim of Rapid is to make completing these tasks as simple as purchasing a book or booking a flight on the web.

The philosophy of Rapid is to deliver customised graphical user interfaces that enable domain specialists to achieve their tasks. These tasks make use of domain-specific applications that run on remote compute resources; a requirement which is satisfied by translating the task into one or several computational jobs to be performed on Grid and Cloud Computing infrastructures, and High-Performance Computing facilities.

Customised interfaces allow tasks to be performed without referring to terminology about the underlying computational infrastructure. Moreover, the system allows to expose particular features of applications as not to overwhelm the user.

Where to start

Have a look at what Rapid can produce in the form of a video. If you like it, then have a look at a short video that explains how to install Rapid and deliver your first portal. Move on to the basic tutorial and finally, consult the manual to unlock advanced features.

Relevant files and media

Funding and support

The development and application of Rapid is funded by EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, JISC, ENGAGE (JISC) and OMII-UK (EPSRC)

Rapid News

Ms Sandra Gesing

Affiliation: 
University of Tübingen, Germany

Sandra will work with Jano and Jos to develop a portal for mass spectrometry tools using Rapid. She is in room 2.23.

Dates: 
15 Sep 2010 - 18 Sep 2010

Screencast: A Rapid portal for Parallel TCoffee running on HECToR

We show a screencast of a portlet created for Parallel TCoffee—the first parallel implementation of the TCoffee multiple sequence alignment tool. The portlet was developed using our Rapid technology and shows how TCoffee can be run on the UK National Academic Supercomputer HECToR. To see this demo you require Flash to be installed.

Surfing for earthquakes

A better understanding of the ground beneath our feet will result from research by seismologists and Rapid—a group of computer scientists at the University of Edinburgh. The Earth's structure controls how earthquakes travel and the damage they can cause. A clear picture of this structure would be extremely valuable to earthquake planners, but it requires the analysis of huge amounts of data.

Screencast:A Rapid portal for computational chemistry on HECToR, the UK-national academic supercomputer

Below a screencast where Rapid was used to develop a portal for the UK-national academic supercomputer HECToR. The portal shows how to setup an advanced compute job involving computational chemistry. You need Flash installed in the browser to watch the video below. Click here for a large version

Rapid Version 1.5.1 Released

Version: 
1.5.1

Minor bugfixes

Rapid Version 1.5.0 Released

Version: 
1.5.0

This new version of Rapid uses a new and faster build system based on Ant and Ivy that generates smaller portlets. File Browsers are improved and can be used to select multiple files at once. Error reporting is improved with the addition of Schematron Rapid now checks a large number of referential constraints. The Code Generation system has been rewritten and a number of bugs have been fixed.

TOPP goes Rapid

Source:

Cluster Computing and the Grid, IEEE International Symposium on, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, p.598--599 (2010)

ISBN:

978-0-7695-4039-9

Abstract:

Proteomics, the study of all the proteins contained in a particular sample, e.g., a cell, is a key technology in current biomedical research. The complexity and volume of proteomics data sets produced by mass spectrometric methods clearly suggests the use of grid-based high-performance computing for analysis. TOPP and OpenMS are open-source packages for proteomics data analysis; however, they do not provide support for Grid computing. In this work we present a portal interface for high-throughput data analysis with TOPP. The portal is based on Rapid, a tool for efficiently generating standardized portlets for a wide range of applications. The web-based interface allows the creation and editing of user-defined pipelines and their execution and monitoring on a Grid infrastructure. The portal also supports several file transfer protocols for data staging. It thus provides a simple and complete solution to high-throughput proteomics data analysis for inexperienced users through a convenient portal interface.

Hazard forecasting in real time: from controlled laboratory tests to volcanoes and earthquakes

The inherent limits to the predictability of brittle failure events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are important, unknown, and much debated. We will establish techniques to determine what this limit is in the ideal case of controlled laboratory tests, for the first time in real-time, prospective mode, meaning before failure has occurred.

Acronym: 
RapidHazard

Domain-specific web-portal interfaces to the HECToR National Supercomputing Facility

Develop domain-specific web portals for submitting and managing corresponding compute jobs on the HECToR National Supercomputing Facility (http://www.hector.ac.uk/) in order to reduce the current failure rates and lower the barrier of uptake to new user groups.

Acronym: 
Rapid-HECToR

Rapid Tutorial

Speaker(s): 
Jos.Koetsier
Presentation Type: 
Tutorial

Not every user knows how to submit a compute job by a remote login or to adapt to different job- submission systems when switching between facilities. In recognition, a recent trend is to provide web portals as an interface, which come in two types, each with its own major drawback.

Date and time: 
Monday, 28 June, 2010 - 12:30
Location: 
JISC Roadshow, Swann Building, Kings Buildings, University of Edinburgh, UK