Community Building Use Cases

These use cases describe how campus information technology (IT) administrators and campus-based research projects: (a) treat external resources (other campuses or national providers) as extensions of their campus environments, (b) offer services at their campuses to others in the research community, and (c) deliver new services to their campuses leveraging the wider community's experiences and solutions.

(18 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
CB-01	InCommon-based Authentication
CB-02	Share the public research computing “environment” with campus resources
CB-03	Remote desktop services for researchers
CB-04	Access campus research data from a community resource
CB-05	Workflow automation combining community and campus resources
CB-06	Sharing computational facilities among campuses
CB-07	Support for commercial service providers
CB-08	Use a community login service with campus login servers
CB-09	Access a community data collection from campus
CB-10	Synchronize research data between campus and community resources
CB-11	Archive research data on a community resource
CB-12	Setup monitoring and usage reporting for a campus HPC resource
CB-13	Provide a simple interface to access any of the high-throughput computing queues available to a campus
CB-14	Submit tasks to any of the high-throughput computing queues available to a campus
CB-15	Develop an application or gateway that submits tasks to any of the high-throughput computing queues available to a campus
CB-16	Build a cluster using a community guide or toolkit
CB-17	Obtain a list of individuals at a specific campus who have allocations
CB-18	Obtain a list of individuals at a specific campus who have used science gateways

The public research computing environment should be open and extensible: a "community infrastructure." In order to use and participate in this environment, community members (researchers, application developers, service providers, campus IT administrators) must be able to access details about the system’s design, implementation status, and the driving user needs.

Note: In these use cases, the terms “service” and “service provider” are used broadly. Any of the following would be examples of “services” if they are shared with researchers: a computer system, a website or web-based application, a computer system with a specific software application installed for use, a high-capacity data storage device, a long-term data archiving service, a virtual machine (IaaS) host, a software repository, or an identity provider.

(17 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
CI-01	Access system information
CI-02	Manually publish system information
CI-03	Automate changes to system information
CI-04	Publish current and desired system capabilities, their availability, and their implementation status
CI-05	Discover current and desired system capabilities, their availability, and their implementation status
CI-06	Rate the priority or quality of a community need or contribution
CI-07	Discuss a community activity
CI-08	Conduct an engineering review of a community contribution
CI-09	Discover and inspect system capabilities currently under development
CI-10	Discover and review engineering documents for a specific capability or component
CI-11	Manage the source code, documentation, and installable packages for a capability
CI-12	Learn about a community
CI-13	Learn about a community's resources for researchers
CI-14	Learn how to provide services within a community
CI-15	Access a directory of people and groups within a community
CI-16	Publish batch hardware, configuration, and status information
CI-17	View usage data for community resources

These use cases describe how scientific projects make use of resources from more than one public research computing community, and how a given community can support such projects. A public research computing community is an organized set of resources and processes that work together coherently to serve the needs of a community of researchers. Many such communities exist worldwide, such as XSEDE and PRACE. Each community has computing resources (e.g., an HPC cluster or an archival storage service) and a set of services that add value to the community’s resources (e.g., a community login service or a user support service).

Although each use case describes an activity that uses resources from multiple communities, the use cases themselves are written from the point of view of a single community. The goal is to express what a single community must offer to support the activity.

(4 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
FI-01	Conduct a high-throughput computing project using resources from multiple communities
FI-02	Supply an organization’s research information technology information to an aggregation service
FI-03	Build a research information technology discovery service that lists services from multiple organizations
FI-04	Discover research information technology offered by multiple organizations

These use cases describe how to make shared computing resources behave similarly to the Open Science Grid's (OSG's) Compute Elements (CEs) and Storage Elements (SEs), enabling them to be added to the set of services available to OSG Virtual Organizations (VOs). (Note: The Federation & Interoperation use cases resulted from generalizing these OSG/LHC-specific use cases.)

Beyond supporting individual research projects, the research community can also serve as a gathering point for researchers who share common research topics or methods. The use cases in this area describe how researchers can organize themselves as research communities and coordinate their activities for the greater good.

(10 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
RC-01	Participate in a research discussion forum
RC-02	Manage usage within an allocation
RC-03	Install software on a resource for use by a research community
RC-04	Find where a specific application or service is available within the system
RC-05	Request a software installation
RC-06	Find a software container that will help set up a specific runtime environment
RC-07	Use a container to create a specific runtime environment on a resource
RC-08	Access a repository of files from a compute resource administered by a service provider
RC-09	Access a repository of files from a cloud resource administered by the researcher
RC-10	Create or modify the contents of a repository that will be accessed on many resources

These use cases describe how research communities use community computing resources to power their "science gateways," supporting the specialized needs of research fields, communities of practice, and joint initiatives. Science gateways are applications—most often web-based—that are used by groups of researchers with similar needs. Each gateway is developed and operated by one or more leaders in the research field who applies for an allocation to serve the community. Gateways can also help researchers who have their own allocations by providing a more customized, user-friendly interface.

(7 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
SGW-01	Acquire credentials that allow use of community resources
SGW-02	Transfer files to and from a community resource
SGW-03	Run an application on a community resource
SGW-04	Enable gateway users to transfer files to or from a community resource
SGW-05	Obtain information about a community resource
SGW-06	Estimate when a job submitted to a community resource is likely to finish
SGW-07	Retrieve user specific information using user credentials

These use cases describe how Service Providers (SPs) integrate their resources with a broader research computing community.

(18 use cases)

Use Case ID	Title	Use Case Description
SPI-01	Resource integration console
SPI-02	Guided resource discovery
SPI-03	View all resource information
SPI-04	Access resource information from an application
SPI-05	Active account information
SPI-06	Emergency account suspension
SPI-07	Enable a research community to install software on a resource
SPI-08	Register availability of a specific application or service for use
SPI-09	Test a system for vulnerabilities using an automated service
SPI-10	Obtain expert help with resolving a system vulnerability
SPI-11	Host a repository of files so it can be accessed on many resources and manually populated by authorized individuals
SPI-12	Host a repository of files so it can be accessed on many resources and automatically populated
SPI-13	Configure a service to use high-assurance X.509 certificates for user access
SPI-14	Report resource usage against allocations
SPI-15	Configure notifications regarding resource allocations and individual users
SPI-16	Scan a moderated service provider forum for a solution to a problem other SPs are likely to have had
SPI-17	Push an alert or information to resource users via a web interface
SPI-18	Offer a web interface for a community resource

Research computing usually involves advanced systems, applications, and methods. Technical support is necessary for researchers, students, and educators to make effective use of the services and resources available to the community and continuously advance the leading edge of what is possible.