Gateways offer broader audiences access to large computational and data resources by using customized user interfaces. An interest in gateways has increased the number of new user science communities, but the workforce to develop gateway architectures is marginally addressed. In an effort to train the next generation of gateway developers, Elizabeth City State University hosted a 5 day gateway architecture workshop (Tuesday, January 2 - Saturday, January 6, 2018 ) with the purpose to expose under-represented groups to gateways architectures by providing an understanding of distributed computing and hands-on experiences in developing them.
The workshop focused on the following objectives:
- Understand an ability to develop remote job submission interfaces to a virtual cluster
- Demonstrate an understanding of micro service architectures and their underlying distributed systems foundations.
- Demonstrate an ability to develop API services.
The workshop concluded with students having proficiency in the following:
- Provide an understanding of distributed computing systems concepts to “Software as a Service” systems, which support scientific research.
- Demonstrate abstract concepts and practical techniques for building gateways architectures.
- Apply the general concepts of distributed systems and understanding to applicable areas.
- Demonstrate an ability design, develop and deploy component based micro service architecture
Each day focused on modules composed of a lab and exercise, which incrementally allowed workshop participants to build a two micro service gateway (Figure 1). The lab consisted of a examples, so students could understand the process of gateway component while the exercise allowed them to adapt the lab and independently execute it. The exercises and labs can be viewed: https://gitlab.com/GateArch/2018.
