Research of Applications of the Common Execution Architecture Framework for the AstroGrid

The AstroGrid is a mature and widely used project proposed by the UK e-Science, which has been building a complete Virtual Observatory (VO) infrastructure. The Common Execution Architecture (CEA) has evolved to become the main part of the AstroGrid service architecture. It is an attempt to create a reasonably small set of interfaces and schema to model how to execute a typical astronomical application within the Virtual Observatory. Thus any deep analysis and understanding of the AstroGrid Common Execution Architecture will help to promote the standard for astronomical application softwares and shape their future development. It is of great significance to integrate and seamlessly connect astronomical data and applications.In this paper, we describe in detail the principle of implementation, basic architecture, interface analysis, and application model of the AstroGrid Common Execution Architecture within the Virtual Observatory. We give a full discussion of how to achieve the AstroGrid applications with the CEA, which is complied with the IVOA specifications as well. There are four steps needed to publish astronomical data with the CEA. These are the setting of environments, preparation of the service code/configuration file, packaging/deployment of applications, and call of applications in the browsers or clients. The CEA of cone search service is implemented for the publishing of USTC processed spectral data, and test results show that its design is successful.