561 research outputs found
Database independent Migration of Objects into an Object-Relational Database
This paper reports on the CERN-based WISDOM project which is studying the
serialisation and deserialisation of data to/from an object database
(objectivity) and ORACLE 9i.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures; CMS CERN Conference Report cr02_01
Mobile Computing in Physics Analysis - An Indicator for eScience
This paper presents the design and implementation of a Grid-enabled physics
analysis environment for handheld and other resource-limited computing devices
as one example of the use of mobile devices in eScience. Handheld devices offer
great potential because they provide ubiquitous access to data and
round-the-clock connectivity over wireless links. Our solution aims to provide
users of handheld devices the capability to launch heavy computational tasks on
computational and data Grids, monitor the jobs status during execution, and
retrieve results after job completion. Users carry their jobs on their handheld
devices in the form of executables (and associated libraries). Users can
transparently view the status of their jobs and get back their outputs without
having to know where they are being executed. In this way, our system is able
to act as a high-throughput computing environment where devices ranging from
powerful desktop machines to small handhelds can employ the power of the Grid.
The results shown in this paper are readily applicable to the wider eScience
community.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Presented at the 3rd Int Conf on Mobile Computing
& Ubiquitous Networking (ICMU06. London October 200
Grid Databases for Shared Image Analysis in the MammoGrid Project
The MammoGrid project aims to prove that Grid infrastructures can be used for
collaborative clinical analysis of database-resident but geographically
distributed medical images. This requires: a) the provision of a
clinician-facing front-end workstation and b) the ability to service real-world
clinician queries across a distributed and federated database. The MammoGrid
project will prove the viability of the Grid by harnessing its power to enable
radiologists from geographically dispersed hospitals to share standardized
mammograms, to compare diagnoses (with and without computer aided detection of
tumours) and to perform sophisticated epidemiological studies across national
boundaries. This paper outlines the approach taken in MammoGrid to seamlessly
connect radiologist workstations across a Grid using an "information
infrastructure" and a DICOM-compliant object model residing in multiple
distributed data stores in Italy and the UKComment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Design Patterns for Description-Driven Systems
In data modelling, product information has most often been handled separately
from process information. The integration of product and process models in a
unified data model could provide the means by which information could be shared
across an enterprise throughout the system lifecycle from design through to
production. Recently attempts have been made to integrate these two separate
views of systems through identifying common data models. This paper relates
description-driven systems to multi-layer architectures and reveals where
existing design patterns facilitate the integration of product and process
models and where patterns are missing or where existing patterns require
enrichment for this integration. It reports on the construction of a so-called
description-driven system which integrates Product Data Management (PDM) and
Workflow Management (WfM) data models through a common meta-model.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures. Presented at the 3rd Enterprise Distributed
Object Computing EDOC'99 conference. Mannheim, Germany. September 199
The Reification of Patterns in the Design of Description-Driven Systems
To address the issues of reusability and evolvability in designing self-
describing systems, this paper proposes a pattern-based, object-oriented,
description-driven system architecture. The proposed architecture embodies four
pillars - first, the adoption of a multi-layered meta-modeling architecture and
reflective meta-level architecture, second, the identification of four data
modeling relationships that must be made explicit such that they can be
examined and modified dynamically, third, the identification of five design
patterns which have emerged from practice and have proved essential in
providing reusable building blocks for data management, and fourth, the
encoding of the structural properties of the five design patterns by means of
one pattern, the Graph pattern. The CRISTAL research project served as the
basis onto which the pattern-based meta-object approach has been applied. The
proposed architecture allows the realization of reusability and adaptability,
and is fundamental in the specification of self-describing data management
components.Comment: 10 pages 11 figure
Meta-Data Objects as the Basis for System Evolution
One of the main factors driving object-oriented software development in the Web- age is the need for systems to evolve as user requirements change. A crucial factor in the creation of adaptable systems dealing with changing requirements is the suitability of the underlying technology in allowing the evolution of the system. A reflective system utilizes an open architecture where implicit system aspects are reified to become explicit first-class (meta-data) objects. These implicit system aspects are often fundamental structures which are inaccessible and immutable, and their reification as meta-data objects can serve as the basis for changes and extensions to the system, making it self- describing. To address the evolvability issue, this paper proposes a reflective architecture based on two orthogonal abstractions - model abstraction and information abstraction. In this architecture the modeling abstractions allow for the separation of the description meta-data from the system aspects they represent so that they can be managed and versioned independently, asynchronously and explicitly. A practical example of this philosophy, the CRISTAL project, is used to demonstrate the use of meta-data objects to handle system evolution
Experiences of Engineering Grid-Based Medical Software
Objectives: Grid-based technologies are emerging as potential solutions for
managing and collaborating distributed resources in the biomedical domain. Few
examples exist, however, of successful implementations of Grid-enabled medical
systems and even fewer have been deployed for evaluation in practice. The
objective of this paper is to evaluate the use in clinical practice of a
Grid-based imaging prototype and to establish directions for engineering future
medical Grid developments and their subsequent deployment. Method: The
MammoGrid project has deployed a prototype system for clinicians using the Grid
as its information infrastructure. To assist in the specification of the system
requirements (and for the first time in healthgrid applications), use-case
modelling has been carried out in close collaboration with clinicians and
radiologists who had no prior experience of this modelling technique. A
critical qualitative and, where possible, quantitative analysis of the
MammoGrid prototype is presented leading to a set of recommendations from the
delivery of the first deployed Grid-based medical imaging application. Results:
We report critically on the application of software engineering techniques in
the specification and implementation of the MammoGrid project and show that
use-case modelling is a suitable vehicle for representing medical requirements
and for communicating effectively with the clinical community. This paper also
discusses the practical advantages and limitations of applying the Grid to
real-life clinical applications and presents the consequent lessons learned.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables, 5 figures. In press International Journal of
Medical Informatics. Elsevier publisher
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