A Multiview Visualisation Architecture for Open Distributed Systems

Program visualisation is an attractive way for understanding collaboration structures of complex distributed systems. By using the concepts of the open distributed processing-reference model (ODP-RM) as entities for visualisation, a multiview visualisation architecture is presented, which provides a large degree of flexibility in visualising the actions of an ODP system. The architecture has been implemented for visualising the CORBA system resulting in a visualisation tool called OBVlouS

HOMA: automatic re-scheduling of multiple invocations in CORBA

This report presents HOMA, an efficient and scalable CORBA-based code coupling environment. HOMA is composed by an IDL compiler and a runtime support. From IDL definitions of CORBA objects, HOMA compiler automatically extracts all the informations which allow efficient and scalable composition of method invocations. The compiler and runtime support rely on two functionalities: the automatic extraction of parallelism between method invocations and the lazy protocol used to communicate effective parameters. The runtime re-schedules the invocations and the associated communications using the parallelism deduced from their IDL definitions. The scheduling strategy is based on ATHAPASCAN. Used together these functionalities enable parallel communication between code coupled applications. This property is conserved by composition of invocations. The technology is based on the generation of extended client stub and server skeleton on top of standard client stub and server skeleton generated by existing IDL/CORBA compiler. Parallelism is handled by the parallel programming environment ATHAPASCAN. Thus, HOMA is highly portable. The target applications are high performance numerical simulations

Re-Engineering of the GSI Control System

After more than 12 years of operation without substantial revision a modernization of the control system at GSI is overdue. A strategy to adapt the system to future needs is outlined. The system has to support a specific environment of which the main features are described. More flexibility than in the current system can be achieved while still using many parts of the actual system.Comment: ICALEPCS 2001, Talk WEAT002, 3 pages, Late

Performance evaluation of a distributed integrative architecture for robotics

The eld of robotics employs a vast amount of coupled sub-systems. These need to interact cooperatively and concurrently in order to yield the desired results. Some hybrid algorithms also require intensive cooperative interactions internally. The architecture proposed lends it- self amenable to problem domains that require rigorous calculations that are usually impeded by the capacity of a single machine, and incompatibility issues between software computing elements. Implementations are abstracted away from the physical hardware for ease of de- velopment and competition in simulation leagues. Monolithic developments are complex, and the desire for decoupled architectures arises. Decoupling also lowers the threshold for using distributed and parallel resources. The ability to re-use and re-combine components on de- mand, therefore is essential, while maintaining the necessary degree of interaction. For this reason we propose to build software components on top of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) using Web Services. An additional bene t is platform independence regarding both the operating system and the implementation language. The robot soccer platform as well as the associated simulation leagues are the target domain for the development. Furthermore are machine vision and remote process control related portions of the architecture currently in development and testing for industrial environments. We provide numerical data based on the Python frameworks ZSI and SOAPpy undermining the suitability of this approach for the eld of robotics. Response times of signi cantly less than 50 ms even for fully interpreted, dynamic languages provides hard information showing the feasibility of Web Services based SOAs even in time critical robotic applications

Numerical Propulsion System Simulation Architecture

The Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) is a framework for performing analysis of complex systems. Because the NPSS was developed using the object-oriented paradigm, the resulting architecture is an extensible and flexible framework that is currently being used by a diverse set of participants in government, academia, and the aerospace industry. NPSS is being used by over 15 different institutions to support rockets, hypersonics, power and propulsion, fuel cells, ground based power, and aerospace. Full system-level simulations as well as subsystems may be modeled using NPSS. The NPSS architecture enables the coupling of analyses at various levels of detail, which is called numerical zooming. The middleware used to enable zooming and distributed simulations is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). The NPSS Developer's Kit offers tools for the developer to generate CORBA-based components and wrap codes. The Developer's Kit enables distributed multi-fidelity and multi-discipline simulations, preserves proprietary and legacy codes, and facilitates addition of customized codes. The platforms supported are PC, Linux, HP, Sun, and SGI