Frequently Asked Questions: caGrid Portal Questions


	Table of Contents Frequently Asked Questions: caGrid Portal Questions caGrid Portal Questions Why doesn't my service appear in the Portal? My service is in the Portal, but is Inactive My service is in the portal and ACTIVE, but there is a status warning indicating the "Service will not be visible in the portal" My service is in the Portal, but is not on the map. Why is my old service still in the Portal? How does the Portal assign Status to a Service? Why is there a difference between the services registered in the Index service and the Portal? Who can I contact for help with the Portal?

caGrid Portal Questions

Why doesn't my service appear in the Portal?

Firstly, depending on server load, network traffic etc, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours for any new service to appear in the caGrid Portal. Its usually on the low end of this time scale, but its not instantaneous.

This question is very frequenty asked on the caGrid users list and its usually a few common reasons on why a service is not in the caGrid Portal.We've listed them here with pointers on how to debug/correct these problems. If the debugging steps are confusing or you would like more help, please feel free to contact the contact the CBIIT Application Support team.

Here are the typical problems

Service in not in the caGrid Index Service.
Service is in the index, but the registration is invalid.

For both of these problems, please troubleshoot Index Service registration.

Index and/or Portal have their system clocks significantly out of sync.
Your service has been banned by the Portal

For both of these issues, please contact the CBIIT Application Support team.

My service is in the Portal, but is Inactive

The Portal marks a service as Active if it meets all of these criteria:

Registered in the Index Service
Metadata is fully aggregated
Service URL can be reached from the Internet (i.e., putting the service URL in a web browser returns a page with "Hi there, this is an AXIS service!"). That is, a HTTP GET on the service URL completes.

If your service is Inactive, please troubleshoot Index Service registration.

My service is in the portal and ACTIVE, but there is a status warning indicating the "Service will not be visible in the portal"

The only reason for the service to be ACTIVE and also for the message "Service will not be visible in the Portal" to appear in the diagnostics, is due to the metadata (in the Portal) being invalid/null.

Usually, this will correct itself once the Portal renews the metadata. If the Portal does not see any change in the metadata (it maintains a checksum of the metadata and re-loads metadata when it changes), then there are two possible fixes:

Make a slight change to the metadata. For example, add a service description to the service metadata. Then re-deploy the service and re-start the service container.
Contact NCICB application support and ask them to force the production portal to renew the metadata. (Alternatively, for the Training Grid portal contact the user's mailing list).

My service is in the Portal, but is not on the map.

If you have successfully created and deployed a caGrid service and you can see the service in the Portal, but your service does not appear on the US Map that appears on the Portal homepage, this is most likely because you have not entered appropriate metadata for your caGrid service. The portal needs the hosting research center's street address to generate the correct geocoding information for the service to be displayed on the map.

You can do one of three things:

Edit your service metadata in Introduce, using the provided editor, and then redeploy it anyway you like. NOTE: these edits will be "permanent," in that they are made to the service itself and will be used each time the service is deployed.
Redeploy the service using the caGrid Installer (selecting "My Introduce Service" as the service to deploy), which will prompt you for the needed information. The metadata will only be edited in the temporary copy of the service which is used for deploying; it won't change the permanent metadata of your service.
Manually modify the metadata in your deployed service to add the appropriate metadata. The metadata contents are stored in an XML file ending in "serviceMetadata.xml". For example, if your service is named "HelloWorld" and is deployed to Tomcat, you would edit the file

 $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/wsrf/WEB-INF/etc/cagrid_HelloWorld/HelloWorld_serviceMetadata.xml

and add appropriate information in the <ns1:hostingResearchCenter> section of the file (sample below):

<ResearchCenter displayName="Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology " shortName="CBIIT"
xmlns="gme://caGrid.caBIG/1.0/gov.nih.nci.cagrid.metadata.common">
<Address country="US" locality="Rockville" postalCode="20852" stateProvince="MD" street1="2115 Executive Blvd" street2="Suite 5000"/>
<pointOfContactCollection>
<PointOfContact affiliation="NCI-CBIIT" email="doejohn@email.com" firstName="John" lastName="Doe" phoneNumber="(123) 456-7890" role="Grid Administrator"/>
</pointOfContactCollection>
</ResearchCenter>

Note: Please don't use the above XML snippet to cut and paste your serviceMetadata.xml file. We highly recommend that if you plan to edit the metadata manually, you use a utility like XML Spy (or similar) as any formatting or typographical errors can potentially cause schema validation errors.

Note: If your service does not show up in the portal at all, then please see this FAQ

Why is my old service still in the Portal?

This question is frequently asked by service developers who created a service and registered it in the caGrid Index service. But, subsequently they stopped the service advertisement or moved the service advertisement to a different index. The portal follows its own caching strategy and does not always reflect the contents of the caGrid Index Service.

See the this FAQ for details on the Service registration lifecycle within the Portal

If you would like to permanently and immediately remove a service from the portal, then you should contact the CBIIT Application Support team, and request them to ban the service. A service that is placed in the banned state is invisible in the portal, even if the service is active and advertising to the index service.

How does the Portal assign Status to a Service?

Service registration in the Portal has the following life cycle:

A new grid service shows up in caGrid Index.
Service URL is cached in the portal database.
Portal periodically pings the service to see if it is active or inactive.

Prolonged periods of inactivity (that is, more that four days) will result in the service being marked as dormant. In the dormant state, the service is no longer discoverable through the portal. However, should the service become active again, the service will automatically become discoverable (visible) in the portal, once again.

Service States in the Portal

Why is there a difference between the services registered in the Index service and the Portal?

See the previous FAQ. Portal follows its own caching and aggregation mechanism and will not always reflect the contents of the caGrid Index Service.

Who can I contact for help with the Portal?

If you are a service developer who is having issues getting your service in the caGrid Portal, please contact the CBIIT Application Support team. In your request, please provide the following details:

Grid Service URL
Which index service you are registering to
How long your service has been online and registering in the index

If you are a user with general questions about the caGrid Portal, feel free to join the caGrid Users List (cagrid_users-l@list.nih.gov) and post questions to the list.

caBIG-related Questions

FAQs