Componentized Models as a Service (CMaaS)

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project, which will conclude with a Technical Readiness Level of 3-4, will demonstrate the feasibility of the Componentized Models as a Service (CMaaS) system, a web-centric software service architecture that will dramatically improve the manner in which NASA's modeling assets are developed, deployed and used. Under this service architecture, models will be exposed as web services that are fully configurable and executable from a browser. Moreover, the software components from which models are comprised will be published as "pluggable" service modules that can be discovered and incorporated into a model at runtime via a novel dynamic build mechanism. Importantly, existing models and components will require little to no modification to be deployed on the service. The project will leverage technologies developed for the Frontier Dashboard, an extant browser interface to and supporting framework for Parabon's commercial grid computing service. Constructed with GoogleTM Web Toolkit (GWT) components, the Frontier Dashboard provides end users with a rich browser interface for managing large-scale computational jobs. Moreover, it provides developers pre-built mechanisms for user authentication and authorization, account management, and accounting, which greatly eases the burdens of creating web service applications.