TemPSS: A Service Providing Software Parameter Templates and Profiles for Scientific HPC

Generating and managing input data for large-scale scientific computations has, for many classes of application, always been a challenging process. The emergence of new hardware platforms and increasingly complex scientific models compounds this problem as configuration data can change depending on the underlying hardware and properties of the computation. In this paper we present TemPSS (Templates and Profiles for Scientific Software), a web-based service for building and managing application input files using the concepts of software parameter templates and job profiles. Many complex, distributed applications require the expertise of more than one individual to allow an application to run efficiently on different types of hardware. TemPSS supports collaborative development of application configurations through the ability to save, edit and extend job profiles that define the inputs to an application. We describe the process of defining templates and profiles and the structures used to add an application template to the TemPSS service. We also detail the implementation of the service and describe its interfaces and functionality.