Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

GRIDCC - Providing a real-time grid for distributed instrumentation

The GRIDCC project is extending the use of Grid computing to include access to and control of distributed instrumentation. Access to the instruments will be via an interface to a Virtual Instrument Grid Service (VIGS). VIGS is a new concept and its design and implementation, together with middleware that can provide the appropriate Quality of Service (QoS), is a key part of the GRIDCC development plan. An overall architecture for GRIDCC has been defined and some of the application areas, which include distributed power systems, remote control of an accelerator and the remote monitoring of a large particle physics experiment, are briefly discussed.E

Towards agent-based crowd simulation in airports using games technology

We adapt popular video games technology for an agent-based crowd simulation in an airport terminal. To achieve this, we investigate the unique traits of airports and implement a virtual crowd by exploiting a scalable layered intelligence technique in combination with physics middleware and a socialforces approach. Our experiments show that the framework runs at interactive frame-rate and evaluate the scalability with increasing number of agents demonstrating navigation behaviour

A Pure Java Parallel Flow Solver

In this paper an overview is given on the "Have Java" project to attain a pure Java parallel Navier-Stokes flow solver (JParNSS) based on the thread concept and remote method invocation (RMI). The goal of this project is to produce an industrial flow solver running on an arbitrary sequential or parallel architecture, utilizing the Internet, capable of handling the most complex 3D geometries as well as flow physics, and also linking to codes in other areas such as aeroelasticity etc. Since Java is completely object-oriented the code has been written in an object-oriented programming (OOP) style. The code also includes a graphics user interface (GUI) as well as an interactive steering package for the parallel architecture. The Java OOP approach provides profoundly improved software productivity, robustness, and security as well as reusability and maintainability. OOP allows code construction similar to the aerodynamic design process because objects can be software coded and integrated, reflecting actual design procedures. In addition, Java is the programming language of the Internet and thus Java is the programming language of the Internet and thus Java objects on disparate machines or even separate networks can be connected. We explain the motivation for the design of JParNSS along with its capabilities that set it apart from other solvers. In the first two sections we present a discussion of the Java language as the programming tool for aerospace applications. In section three the objectives of the Have Java project are presented. In the next section the layer structures of JParNSS are discussed with emphasis on the parallelization and client-server (RMI) layers. JParNSS, like its predecessor ParNSS (ANSI-C), is based on the multiblock idea, and allows for arbitrarily complex topologies. Grids are accepted in GridPro property settings, grids of any size or block number can be directly read by JParNSS without any further modifications, requiring no additional preparation time for the solver input. In the last section, computational results are presented, with emphasis on multiprocessor Pentium and Sun parallel systems run by the Solaris operating system (OS)

Grid-enabling FIRST: Speeding up simulation applications using WinGrid

The vision of grid computing is to make computational power, storage capacity, data and applications available to users as readily as electricity and other utilities. Grid infrastructures and applications have traditionally been geared towards dedicated, centralized, high performance clusters running on UNIX flavour operating systems (commonly referred to as cluster-based grid computing). This can be contrasted with desktop-based grid computing which refers to the aggregation of non-dedicated, de-centralized, commodity PCs connected through a network and running (mostly) the Microsoft Windowstrade operating system. Large scale adoption of such Windowstrade-based grid infrastructure may be facilitated via grid-enabling existing Windows applications. This paper presents the WinGridtrade approach to grid enabling existing Windowstrade based commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (CSPs). Through the use of a case study developed in conjunction with Ford Motor Company, the paper demonstrates how experimentation with the CSP Witnesstrade and FIRST can achieve a linear speedup when WinGridtrade is used to harness idle PC computing resources. This, combined with the lessons learned from the case study, has encouraged us to develop the Web service extensions to WinGridtrade. It is hoped that this would facilitate wider acceptance of WinGridtrade among enterprises having stringent security policies in place

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services