A Web Portal for the National Grid Service

This paper gives a description of the portal user interface under development for the UK National Grid Service (NGS) by the Grid Technology Group at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory. The first release of the NGS Portal was based on CHEF, the CompreHensive collaborativE Framework originally developed at the University of Michigan. A set of Grid-related tools has been successfully deployed to provide transparent access to NGS service through a familiar Web interface. A CHEF internal service has also been developed to realise Single Sign-On (SSO) via the MyProxy server maintained by the UK Grid Operations and Support Centre. The second release of the NGS Portal is the described which is based on StringBeans, a JSR 168 portal framework. StringBeans has been customised to enable MyProxy login for Grid users through JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorisation Service) by using the MyProxy Login Module. The NGS portal is now being “cloned” for other projects to benefit from the re-usable Java portlet technology.