ADMIRE in a Nutshell

ADMIRE makes sense of the challenges of working with large, distributed datasets by simplifying where possible, unifying where necessary and separating concerns at every level.

Separation of concerns

ADMIRE identifies three types of data user:

  • Domain experts who hold the business perspective for a given data-intensive problem. They need answers to domain-specific questions without having to invest significant effort in development.
  • Data analysis experts specialise in extracting information from data. They devise the strategies to answer the domain experts' questions.
  • DIDC experts (data-intensive distributed computing experts) understand the best ways of harnessing computing resources to build data-intensive processing platforms.

ADMIRE separates the concerns of these users, providing familar tools to the domain experts, a standard canonical approach to describing data-intensive processes for the data analysis experts, and a comprehensive and efficient enactement framework for the DIDC experts.

ADMIRE's architecture

The ADMIRE architecture envisages a wide range of tools coupled to a powerful, extensible enactment framework through a controlled, canonical interaction point called a Gateway.

Domain experts and data analysis experts work together at the tools level to devise ways to extract business information from data. Data analysis experts use the DISPEL language to develop canonical workflows and the necessary algorithmic enactors or processing elements that can be chained together to implement the required solution. DIDC experts implement and support the machinery of the Gateway and its execution environment.

The canonical Gateway

ADMIRE's architecture implements the separation of concerns using a conceptual hourglass.

The top bulb is a creative domain where concepts are dynamic and ever changing and therefore the humans in this space need support from tools.

In the neck of the hourglass, creativity should not be present. We need a stable means of discourse between the analysts, developers and the enactment platform. For data-intensive computing, the DISPEL language acts as the stable means of discourse.

In the bottom bulb we again need creativity. The complexities of mapping a DISPEL sentence onto distributed, physical computational resources an data sources requires many type of expertise and significant levels of automation, such as optimization.

The canonical DISPEL language

The DISPEL language provides the core power of the ADMIRE approach, allowing data analysis experts to describe complex data-intensive workflows in a stable, canonical way which allows for change both in the tools used to create them and in the platforms that enact them.

The ADMIRE software stack

ADMIRE has developed an implementation of the Gateway architecture, DISPEL creation tools and domain portals.

The ADMIRE Platform

The ADMIRE Platform denotes the "server side" stack of software that implements the canonical Gateway and associated components. The ADMIRE Platform comprises:

  • A Gateway service (both REST and WSDL), including:
    • DISPEL processor;
    • pluggable optimisation framework;
    • workflow execution monitor;
    • performance database.
  • An enactment framework based on OGSA-DAI v4.0.
  • A Registry service, fronting a Jena RDF-based ontology store, which provides rich semantic descriptions of all Platform components, processing elements, workflow patterns etc.
  • A Repository service, which provides storage for executable implementations of processing elements, for analysis results, for arbitrary digital entities.

The ADMIRE Workbench

The ADMIRE Workbench denotes the main "client side" tool developed for the composition, submission and monitoring of DISPEL workflows.