[Insight-developers] ETICS: eInfrastructure for Testing, Integration and Configuration of Software

[Hans Johnson]

All,

Interesting site discussing a new initiative to tackle the problems that 
ITK group has faced: http://etics.web.cern.ch/etics/index.html

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Abstract

A broad range of projects from a spectrum of disciplines involve the 
development of software born from the collaborative efforts of partners 
from geographically spread locations. Such software is often the product 
of large-scale initiatives as new technological models like the Grid are 
developed and new eInfrastructures are deployed to help solve complex, 
computational-intensive problems.
Recent experience in such projects has shown that the software products 
often risk suffering from lack of coherence and quality. Among the 
causes of this problem we find the large variety of tools, languages, 
platforms, processes and working habits employed by the partners of the 
projects. In addition, the issue of available funding for maintenance 
and support of software after the initial development phase in typical 
research projects often prevents the developed software tools from 
reaching production-level quality. Establishing a dedicated build and 
test infrastructure for each new project is inefficient, costly and 
time-consuming and requires specialized resources, both human and 
material, that are not easily found.

The ETICS effort aims to support such research and development 
initiatives by integrating existing procedures, tools and resources in a 
coherent infrastructure, additionally providing an intuitive access 
point through a web portal and a professionally managed, multiplatform 
capability based on Grid technologies. The outcome of the project will 
be a facility operated by experts that will enabled distributed research 
projects to integrate their code, libraries and application, validate 
the code against standard guidelines, run extensive automated tests and 
benchmarks, produce reports and improve the overall quality and 
interoperability of the software.

ETICS objectives are not to develop new software but to adapt and 
integrate already existing capabilities, mainly open source, providing 
other research project with the possibility to focus their effort in 
their specific research field and to avoid wasting time and resources in 
such, required, but expensive, activity.

Throughout the duration of the project the ETICS partners will 
investigate the advantages of making use of the ETICS services, the 
technical challenges relates to running such a facility and its 
sustainability for the future.
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Hans