ACID: An Interactive Desktop for CTA Science Gateway

The Astronomical & Physics Cloud Interactive Desktop (ACID) has been developed for the prototype of CTA Science Gateway in Catania, Italy. ACID is based on a web environment that, avoiding any installation on a local PC, allows the use of plenty of software packages for both on-line and off-line analysis of astrophysical data. The users are able to exploit, if applicable, the native Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the tools available in the ACID environment. The ACID environment exploited by the Science Gateway offers two modes of usage: interactively to perform an on-line analysis through the VNC desktop and the native GUIs or shell environment of the programs, Distributed Computing Infrastructure (DCI) to perform an off-line analysis through a workflow submission. For the interactive usage of the remote software, ACID exploits an ad hoc VNC-based User Interface (VUI). Each type of analysis can be exploited through the CTA Science Gateway based on Life ray and WS-PGRADE/gUSE. Data file sharing is ensured by own Cloud technology. All of these functionalities can be also used through iOS and Android devices.