caGrid on JRuby on Rails with Aptana RadRails

Author: Mark Vance

	Contents Introduction Goals Troubleshooting Try It Yourself Phases

Introduction

Rails is powerful open source web application framework utilizing the Ruby programming language. Rails has gained huge popularity in the community through the use of its templates, engines and Rack components that make common development tasks easier to perform "out of the box". Custom "gems" provided by open source developers add to the growing use and ease of Rails by automating more and more tasks commonly needed by developers. Here is a list of sites written in Rails that include Twitter, Hulu and Groupon (http://rubyonrails.org/applications).

JRuby is a 100% Java implementation of the Ruby programming language that runs on the JVM. It offers access to both Java and Ruby libraries and compatibility with previously written Java programs, such as caGrid. Because it implements Ruby, it is completely compatible with Rails and is able to utilize all of the functionality and ease of use provided by the web app framework.

Goals

The goal of this tutorial is to setup and run a JRuby on Rails web application that can:

1. Perform a SyncGTS that with periodically run at a set time interval
2. Allow for Grid authentication against the Authentication Service and Dorian without storing user passwords in the site database.
3. Setup Role management for users of the web application and apply restrictions and grant permissions based on roles.
4. Discover indexed services such as analytical and data services
5. Perform CQL Queries against discovered data services with modifiers and display results
6. Save previously performed queries to be run or edited at future intervals

Troubleshooting

The Troubleshooting JRuby On Rails shows common errors and exceptions that I've encountered while creating the JRuby on Rails application. This page also contains a Working Copy of the Project to assist debugging. This section will continued to be updated as more issues become apparent.

Try It Yourself

GridClient Example currently running on the Training Grid.

Phases

• Step 1. Installing JRuby on Rails
• Step 2. JRuby SyncGTS
• Step 3. Grid Service Authentication
• Step 4. Role Management
• Step 5. Administration and Restricting Access
• Step 6. Analytical and Data Service Discovery
• Step 7. Querying Data Services
• Layout with CSS
• Using MySQL Database
• Deploying to caGrid Container
• Troubleshooting