The VL-e Toolkit home.

About the VL-e Toolkit

The VL-e Toolkit is intended to assimilate useful (Java) tools from various e-Science projects in a structured Software Development Environment with the VBrowser as frontend. The main development platforms are Java 1.6 and the Globus Toolkit 4.0. (Also Eclipse is recommended as main IDE).
All software developed in this project is compatible with these platforms.


The VBrowser

The Virtual Resource Browser or VBrowser is intended as single frontend to the Grid (for more details, see vbrowser). This is the main frontend from the VL-e Toolkit and most users from the VL-e Toolkit will only use this Graphical User Interface to access their Grid resources.

It is an easy to use explorer-like browser for the Grid and it supports core grid file systems like Grid-FTP, SSH-FTP, SRM, LFC and iRods out of the box and presents them to the user in an easy to use tree like structure. This logical structure can be customized by the the user by creating virtual folders and links to remote (grid) resources grouping relevant grid files and other resources together into a single (virtual) browsable environment.

Since it is written in Java no additional (grid) software is needed and it can be easy downloaded and deployed on any modern computer or laptop supporting Java 1.6 (or higher).

It can also be used as a plugin framework to provide application specific features to end users integrating custom data viewers and grid services into this virtual working environment which can be started by a single click on a file or another grid resource.


VBrowser example on Linux.
Main Features:

  • All Grid resources logically ordened in an explore like browser using "Resource Folders".
  • Easy to use 'drag and drop' interface to do file management.
  • Single sign-on authentication to all (remote) Grid resources using Grid proxy authentication.
  • Easy "single click" viewing of remote data for both standard and application specific data.
  • Recognizes Grid URLs in html pages. For example: "gftp://grid.sara.nl/path" or "srb://srb.sara.nl/home/vlenl".
  • Extensible framework for application development using simple applet style plugins to view custom data.
  • Multi client framework for Grid file protocols, OGSA and WSRF compliant web- and Gridservices.

For more about the application groups and their plugins, see the applications page.

Installation

To install the VLET/VBrowser, go to the releases page, download the version you want, and unzip the distribution.

Starting the VBrowser.

How to start the VBrowser:
  • On windows: start the vbrowser.exe located in the 'bin' subdirectory.
  • On linux: start 'vbrowser.sh', also located in the 'bin' subdirectory.
  • Java 1.6: execute 'java -jar vbrowser.jar', also located in the 'bin' subdirectory.

Installation requirements.

No extra configuration is needed, however, you must have Java 1.6 or higher installed on your system.
To install java, go to the SUN Java download page and download java. Most users only need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6.0 edition.

Supported operating systems

Current supported and tested operating systems for the stable version are:
  • Windows XP
  • Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x
  • Redhat (RHEL 5.x) derivatives like Centos and Scientific Linux.
Other platforms which support Java 1.6 should work also, but not all versions and platforms are tested. Mac OS has been reported to work as well, but you will need a recent Java 1.6 installation.

GForge for VLET developers

The VLET project is registered at the gforge.vl-e.nl site.
To directly go to the VLET project page at the VL-e gforge site, follow this link: gforge.vl-e.nl/projects/vlet
To see all the releases at the VLET gforge site, go here: gforge releases.

Download

To download a release from this site or an additional plugin, go to the releases page.