Dear SSG users:
as previously announced, the NSF grant funding the Social Science Gateway is coming to an end on June 30, 2013, and with that, our ability to keep funding the Social Science Gateway is greatly diminished. This post outlines the transition options.
The Social Science Gateway served several key audiences:
- researchers using new and large synthetic data sets, such as the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). These researchers were accomodated in two ways: a straightforward way to access all QWI and OnTheMap (LODES) files via download, and access to them using statistical software on our compute servers or on the XSEDE/TeraGrid resources via our gateway.
- Researchers wishing to move from their comfort zone to the XSEDE resources and back, using a remote graphical desktop to servers with fast access to the TeraGrid (then) and XSEDE (now)
- Researchers wishing to prepare for access to confidential data available in the Census Research Data Centers, who found a similar environment and zero-obs datasets, allowing them to prepare and train for the Census RDC environment.
With the end of NSF Grant SES-0922005, we will no longer be able to support the first two of these audiences, but will continue to support the third option leveraging newer, lower-cost technologies.
The following are thus the transition options:
- VirtualRDC users: Researchers wishing to use the zero-obs datasets (the original “Virtual” RDC) will continue to be able to do so on the "Simulated Census RDC" that continues to emulate the Census RDC environment, and will continue to provide access to the zero-obs datasets. Running on virtual machines, this environment will have few resources assigned to it, and may be available on-demand, rather than continuously, but can be scaled up to meet training and teaching demands on short notice. The VirtualRDC and its maintainer, the Labor Dynamics Institute, will continue to fund this as resources permit. Interested users should read this page.
- Download users: For users who downloaded the QWI, we will continue to provide access to earlier releases, including and up to R2013Q2; however, updates will no longer be prepared for download. Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau has started to make the downloads available directly. The final structure is still evolving, and there is no single landing page equivalent to http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/qwipu. We will put in place a redirect page that should assist users in the transition, once we know more. If warranted, we may make R2013Q3 available as well, as resources permit.
- SSG and XSEDE compute users: IMPORTANT: Researchers who used the SSG compute nodes, either for local computing here on the SSG, or in preparation for computing on XSEDE, will have until July 31, 2013 to remove any files from the system. All user files will subsequently be archived until Dec 31, 2013, after which time they will be deleted. Their XSEDE resources are not affected by this.
- Cornell users of any of these resources should contact Lars Vilhuber for additional information.
The Synthetic Data Server (SDS) is funded through a different grant, and will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.
