Scope Management

What's in Scope?

In gCube, a resource may only be shared within one or more scopes. Outside these, the resource can neither be discovered nor used.

A Running Instance, in particular, may operate in different scopes at different times. For this to happen, clients must specify a scope when contacting the instance. Similarly, any state which the instance might create must retain the scope of the call which triggered the creation.

It is so that resources, WS-Resources, and calls are all scoped in gCube.

Modelling Scope

In gCube, there are three levels of scope: the Infrastructure, the Virtual Organisation (VO), and the Virtual Research Environment (VRE).

The levels are hierarchically related: the VRE groups resource which satisfy the requirements of a particular application, the VO groups resources which support the operation of one or more VREs, and the infrastructure groups resources which support the operation of one or more VOs. In particular, a VRE exists only in the context of a VO which in turn exists in the context of some infrastructure. Informally, we say that the VRE is below the VO and that the infrastructure is above it.

We use expressions of the form /A/B/C to denote a VRE C below a VO B below an infrastructure A. Informally, /A/B/C may be thought of as the fully qualified name of C. More formally, we use the following grammar for scope expressions:

SCOPE : = = I | VO | VRE
I :== /NAME
VO :== I/NAME
VRE :== VO/NAME
NAME :== <a conventional label>

In gCF, scope expressions can be conveniently thought as serialisations of GCUBEScope objects. to be continued...

Scope Rules

Scoping is defined around a first a basic rule:

R1) a resource in the scope of a VO is also in the scope of the VREs below.

So, a resource in /A/B is also in /A/B/C but not necessarily in /A or in /A/D.

R1 captures the intuition that resources shared by a Virtual Organisation are immediately available to all its applications. As noted above, these resources are most often dedicated to the management of the VREs: gCube Hosting Nodes and Running Instances of Core services have typical example of VO-level resources.

Note: The opposite does not typically hold: a resource shared in a VRE may be dedicated to it. That is, it may not be shared in the VO above (and, for R1, in the other VREs of that same VO).

Note: The rule does not extend to infrastructure scope: a resource in that scope may not be automatically shared in the VOs below. This captures the intuition that resources with infrastructure scope manage VOs in a way which is transparent to them, 'in the background'. gCube Hosting Nodes are the notable exception here: as the the main fabric of the infrastructure, they are pooled at the level of the infrastructure and then explicitly joined to one ore more VOs for sharing.

We move now to consider the rules which restrict, widen, or simply complement R1 for individual resources types.

Scoping Rules for gCube Hosting Nodes

Let GI range over gCube Infrastructures and GHN be a hosting node.

GHN1) GHN may only be shared in one infrastructure: exist GI. GHN in GI and (GHN in S => S below GI)

GHN2) if a GHN is shared in a scope is also shared above it: GHN in S => for each S' above S. GHN in S'

• NB: GHN2) proves that the converse of DEF) holds for GHNs: A GHN cannot be shared in VRE(VO) if it is not shared also in the VO(GI) above.

gCore implications:

• DEF) + GHN2) => model GHN scope as a list of one GI and zero or more VOs.
• on add, enforce GHN1) and retain only VO from VRE scopes (GCUBEHostingNode)
• on remove, prevent removal of GI if attempted (GCUBEHostingNode)
• on bootstrap, require configuration of single GI and allow zero ore more start VOs (GHNBuilder)

Scoping Rules for gCube Services

Let SV be a gCube Service.

SV1) if SV is shared in a scope it is also shared below it: SV in S => for each S' in S. R in S'

• NB: This extends DEF) to infrastructure-level scope make scoping simplest for services.

gCore implications: none special, scopes are immutable for services (i.e. for the ones already deployed).

Scoping Rules for Running Instances (RIs) of gCube services

Running instances are a first example of resource type for which scoping rules are further constrained by the scope of related resources. In fact, running instances relate to their services and the hosting nodes on which they are deployed.

Let SV(RI) and GHN(RI) denote, respectively, the service of a RI and the GHN on which the RI is deployed.

RI1) RI can only be shared where its GHN and service can: RI in S => GHN(RI) in S and SV(RI) in S

• NB: The opposite of RI1) does not hold: a RI is not necessarily shared wherever its GHN and its service are.

gCore implications:

• on add, enforce RI1) (ServiceContext)
• on startup,
  • generic service: subscribe consumer for GHN remove scope events only (ServiceContext) => remove all RI scopes contained in those removed from the GHN (consumer).
  • local service: subscribe consumer for GHN remove and add scope events (ServiceContext) => add new GHN scopes to RI (consumer).
• on bootstrap,
  • allow JNDI configuration of zero or more start scopes (RIBuilder)
  • static only : add all GHN scopes if no start scopes are available (RIBuilder). Prevent in dynamic bootstrap.

Scoping Rules for WS-Resource generated by Running Instances of gCube services

WS-Resources are anther example of resource type for which scoping rules are further constrained by the scope of related resources, in this case the running instance which generate them. Let WSR denote a WS-Resource and RI(WSR) the RI through which has generated WSR.

WSR1) WSR can only be shared where its RI can: WSR in S => RI(WSR) in S

• NB: The opposite of RI1 does not hold: a RI is not necessarily shared wherever its GHN and its service are.

gCore implications:

• on creation, enforce WSR1) (GCUBEHandler)
• on remove, remove from all WS-Resource which have been created by some stateful-port-type of the RI below the removed RI scope;
  • due to persistence, cannot be easily performed locally, use instead queries to the IS

Configuring scope (Static scope)

Static scope applies only for those resources that can be manually created by humans. For such gCube resources, a scope S can be statically (i.e. manually) configured and changed through their appropriate configuration files.

Static scope for gCube Hosting Nodes

A gHN is always manually deployed, therefore a static scope configuration is always needed. Such a configuration is expressed with two parameters in the $GLOBUS_LOCATION/config/GHNConfig.xml file.

• infrastructure reports the GI the gHN joins (and it can be one and only one, as for GHN1). In the following example, the gHN is configured to join the /gcube infrastructure:

 <environment
        name="infrastructure"
        value="gcube"
        type="java.lang.String"
        override="false" />

• startScope is a comma-separated list of VOs the gHN joins. These VOs has to be below the infrastructure (as for GHN2)), otherwise they are ignored. The list of VOs can be an empty list. In the following example, the gHN is configured to join both the /gcube/devsec and the /gcube/testing VO:

<environment
        name="startScopes"
        value="devsec,testing"
        type="java.lang.String"
        override="false" />

Static scope for gCube Services

A gCube service has always only a static scope, specified at service registration time in the Software Repository service.

Static scope for Running Instances (RIs) of gCube services

Static scope for RIs has a mean only for those that are manually deployed. A RI can be configured to join one or more VOs and/or VREs with a comma-separated list. Due to RI1), the VOs has to be a subset of the VOs to which the GHN(RI) is joined to and the VREs has to be below the VOs to which the GHN(RI) is joined to.

In order to specify the static scope of a RI, insert a startScopes parameter in the service context section of the JNDI's RI with the fully qualified name of the scope as follows:

<service name="gcube/common/vremanagement/Deployer">
	
	<environment 
		name="configDir" 
	 	value="@config.dir@" 
	 	type="java.lang.String"
	 	override="false" />
		 		 	
	<environment 
		name="securityManagerClass" 
	 	value="org.gcube.common.core.security.GCUBESimpleServiceSecurityManager" 
	 	type="java.lang.String"
	 	override="false" />
	 	
	<environment 
		name="startScopes" 
	 	value="/gcube/devsec/EM,/gcube/testing/test1" 
	 	type="java.lang.String"
	 	override="false" />

</service>

This parameter is optional: if it is not used, the RI is automatically configured by the gCore to join the VO(s) expressed in the startScopes parameter of the GHNConfig.xml.

gCube Calls & the gCube Handler

[coming soon]

Scope Managers

[coming soon]