Scripting language extensions offered by the GridSpace experiment platform

Abstract

Many existing problem solving environments provide scientists with convenient methods for building scientific applications over distributed computational and storage resources. In many cases a basic set of features of such environments is sufficient to conduct a complete experiment flow. However, complex cases often require extensions supporting an external piece of software or a communication standard not integrated beforehand. Most environments deal with such cases by providing an extension facility and letting third parties add required features. The GridSpace environment also includes several mechanisms for extending its own functionality and here we describe how this can be accomplished. We focus on extensions already implemented such as local job submission and scripting language repositories, as well as on a GUI extension point which can be used to add custom graphical user interfaces to GridSpace experiments independently of their release process. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.