Design and evaluation of a collaborative online visualization and steering framework implementation for computational grids

Today's large-scale scientific research often relies on the collaborative use of a Grid or c-Science infrastructure (e.g. DEISA, EGEE, TeraGrid, OSG) with computational, storage, or other types of physical resources. One of the goals of these emerging infrastructures is to support the work of scientists with advanced problem-solving tools. Many e-Science applications within these infrastructures aim at simulations of a scientific problem on powerful parallel computing resources. Typically, a researcher first performs a simulation for some fixed amount of time and then analyses results in a separate post-processing step, for instance, by viewing results in visualizations. In earlier work we have described early prototypes of a Collaborative Online Visualization and Steering (COVS) Framework in Grids that performs both -simulation and visualization -at the same time (online) to increase the efficiency of e-Scientists. This paper evaluates the evolved mature reference implementation of the COVS framework design that is ready for production usage within Web service-based Grid and e-Science infrastructures.