A Java-based science portal for neutron scattering experiments

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is a state-of-the-art neutron scattering facility recently commissioned by the US Department of Energy (DOE). The neutron beam produced at SNS will have an intensity that is an order of magnitude higher than existing facilities worldwide, enabling a significantly better understanding of and exploration into the structure of matter. The SNS is a billion-and-a-half dollar investment supporting research that impacts diverse science domains such as materials, chemistry, engineering, polymers, structural biology, and superconductivity. Thousands of scientists from around the world will annually perform experiments at SNS, ultimately producing petabytes of raw data that must be reduced, curated, analyzed and visualized. The SNS facility is developing a Java-based one-stop shopping web portal with access to the broad spectrum of data and computing services that will facilitate scientific discovery by enabling geographically dispersed users to seamlessly access and utilize the SNS facility resources. In this article, we describe the design and implementation of the SNS portal, focusing on several key architectural components, highlighting the diverse usage of Java in a production environment, ranging from enterprise level software composition to remote interactive visualization and integration with high performance distributed computing.