ASC Review October 24-25 2000

Geoffrey FoxFlorida State University

Department of Computer Science andCSIT (School of Computational Science and Information

Technology)400 Dirac Science Library

TallahasseeFlorida 32306-4130

fox@csit.fsu.edu

Agenda• Information Environment Database

• Gateway and and Computational Science Portals

• Training Management Database

• Technology review: XML Databases

• New Internet Technologies and Application to Portals

– Macromedia Authoring

– Commercial Training and Collaboration Portals: Blackboard, Centra, WebeX

– Audio-Video Conferencing: HearMe and Access Grid

– Calendar and Scheduling

– Hand-Held Devices: VNC

StandardPreInput Data

Allocation/UtilizationUser/Project

Push (FTP)

Standard CurrentInput Data

Standard PostOutput Data

Post OutputData

Pre InputData

Allocation/UtilizationUser/Project

Pull (FTP)

Pull (SQL)

Pull

Push (SQL)

Com

mon D

ata Architecture

Loader

Kerberized

WebserverMSRC based

DataRemoteData

unchanged exceptfor uniformization

of existing Data between sitesNew data added

New Process

PushHigh Performance ComputersQueue and Individual Job Status

Existing Process

IEDB Functionality

Dynamic HPC StatusUpdated every few

minutes

Classic DatabaseRealtime or Batch

(nightly) update

Dynamic HPC Status

Classic DatabaseOracle .. Flat File

AllocationUtilization Reporting

QueueJob Status

Allocation Matchmaker

User ProjectUpdate

Com

mon

IE

DB

Dat

a bas

eV

irtu

a l o

r R

e al (

Or a

cle

or X

ML

or

. .)

4 + # DC’sHeterogeneous

DistributedMSRC/DC Info

4 IE Services with possibly Heterogeneous Implementations

and 4 Custom servers

IEKerberized

Broker

DistributedClients

IEDB Architecture

Component Activities• Overall Integration

– Architecture– XML standards– Common (Broker) User Interface– Monitor of four major sub-tasks

• 1) Allocation/Utilization Reporting

• 2) (Dynamic) Queue and Process Status

• 3) Resource Allocation Matchmaker and Exchange

• 4) User Project and Account Application

Key Features I• IEDB is a standard commercial database into which

existing information/databases are interfaced– Each data item has one and only one home responsibility for

its integrity

• Four types of Interface– 1) Access Only

– 2) Computer Status from queuing system which is updated every few minutes and stored in database

– 3,4) Access and Update of Data

• The 4 interfaces to IEDB can be entirely disparate technologies – common broker as “controller”

Key Features II• There is an XML definition for all IEDB data which is

used by– Distributed backend information systems

– Four access subsystems

• Contractor and DoD HPCMO to agree on this XML specification

• Well defined mechanisms provided to interface with IEDB either from flat files (data streams) or standalone database

• Owners of original data responsible for putting in standard form – IEDB will “just” run simple checks and filters

Evaluation of Some Internet Technologies• XML Databases: maybe for smaller databases we can

keep information in XML ASCII files with easier maintainability– Mechanism for dynamic exchange and interpretation of data

• Highend Authoring Tools: Distance and web-based training/education – allows more re-use of material

– more students taught with given material

– Competition favoring highest quality curriculum

– Implies more emphasis on high quality authoring environments

– Macromedia tools appear to be current “best-practice”

Audio-Video Conferencing• In Tango training, audio-video conferencing was always

problematical– Video may or may not be necessary – Internet only supports

“postage stamp” talking heads– Audio only requires a few kilobits per second but quality of

service critical and not likely to be supported on current Internet

• HearMe: Support general mix of internet and “ordinary” phone lines which have:– Quality of service and good echo canceling etc. on high-end

phones– Should work with modem (28.8 kilobits per second)

• Access-Grid: Supports multiple high-quality audio and video streams – Each client client needs 20 megabits per second

Commercial Collaboration and Training Systems I

• October 19 2000: WebEx Communications, Inc. the leader in communications infrastructure for Web meetings, today announced record results for its third quarter, ending September 2000. WebEx added more than 700 new customers this quarter, bringing the total number of customers to more than 1800.

• During the third quarter, AT&T and Global Crossing announced the integration of WebEx services into their communications solutions, and Commerce One announced that WebEx services have been integrated into their next generation Commerce One.netTM. WebEx's list of new customers this quarter contains industry leaders in aerospace, automotive, computer software, computer hardware, consulting services, financial services, healthcare, real estate and legal services. New customers include 3-M, Aberdeen Group, Ace Hardware, Altera, Associated General Contractors (ACG), BancTec Inc., Blue Martini, Briggs & Stratton, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., CheckFree Corp., Cosine Communications, Emory University, Enron Energy Info Solutions, Fiserve, Inc., FleetBoston Financial, Forrester Research, Grubb & Ellis, Hewlett-Packard, Keystone Solutions, Kyocera Wireless Corp., Medtronic, Motorola, NEC America, Nexprise, Proxicom, Razorfish, Sunguard, Toyota Motors, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, ZDNet and Ziff-Davis among others.

Commercial Collaboration and Training Systems II• Oct. 12, 2000-- Centra the world's leading provider of software infrastructure and

ASP services for live eLearning and Internet business collaboration, today announced results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2000.

• Centra added 73 new customers in the third quarter, bringing the total customer base to 350 accounts. Some highlights include:

• Centra continues to grow its extensive customer base, serving more than one million users across all industry sectors and geographies. Contributions to this rapid growth in the third quarter were highlighted by:

• The selection of Centra by Andersen Consulting, one of the world's largest professional services firms, as the company's standard infrastructure for the delivery of live eLearning to the company's 65,000 employees.

• A significant initial deployment at Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest soft drink provider with over 35,000 employees, to provide eLearning delivery infrastructure for global SAP end user training and ongoing change management initiatives.

• Siemens AG selected Centra as the corporate eLearning and collaboration standard to support communications and planning among the company's top 1,500 global operations executives. In addition, Siemens, which operates in over 190 countries, will use Centra to support their extensive SAP rollout through hands-on end user training over the Internet.

Commercial Collaboration and Training Systems III• Centra, WebeX and Placeware are synchronous systems

with a similar virtual classroom model– TangoInteractive also quite similar

– IMS (Community Education standards) doesn’t discuss such things

• Blackboard and WebCT are asynchronous server-based systems to integrate curriculum with various tools– They seem to have difficulties supporting sophisticated authoring

tools

– Need to be IMS compliant

• One can produce IMS compatible infrastructure based on existing commercial event bus (iBus) that should support both capabilities and which has open interfaces

Master Plan ….• Produce in FebruaryMay 2001, a best of practice training

portal with– Commercial (iBus) core (so avoid large cost of Tango)– Architecture that supports all the things we could want in

computing, training and education– Well defined Interfaces which are IMS Compatible (Note Grid

Forum “mistake” is that doesn’t know about IMS DoD SCORM etc.) – Draft exists of GXOS Garnet eXtensible(XML) Object Specification

– Has capabilities of existing systems such as Centra and WebeX– Supports best tools and standards for “add-on” capabilities cf.

calendaring evaluation• Till December 2000, agree on requirements and evaluate

existing systems and “add-ons” – produce a paper summarizing this

• June 2001, extend training and migrate technology to Gateway for collaborative computing

All we know and love• Authoring must support Macromedia, PowerPoint, HTML

– Unit is (sub)page not presentation– Good hierarchical module support (IMS does) with as in

WebWisdomNT, UNIX/PC file system model for labeling• GXOS allows Java—CORBA interchange with multiple

realization of objects; any rendering; composition of objects (to add A/V to page etc.)

• Full rendering support for PC, Palmtop and “universal access” (cf. tribal colleges)

• Solve Audio/Video problems – Access Grid or HearMe• Uniform event model (iBus)• Uniform archiving in any database – can faithfully save

complete session so synchronous and asynchronous education both fully supported

• Message Center and Virtual Classroom/Desktop model

Collaborative Portal

PortalML

Database

Database

ResourceML (IMS)

Synchronous Lesson

AsynchronousArchive and Access

Persistent Store ofShared CoursewareEvents, User Info

Real time Share

WebPage

PersonalServer orApplication “Client”

Local Event QueueUser Specific Session Logic

HTML WML W3C WAI Rendering Standards

Store

EventBus

PET Message Center Interface• Yahoo Messenger is an interesting

model for a portal interface• Application that invokes browser

– more robust than browser• Runs on PC or Palmtop and

“only” contains summary information suitable for Palms

• Has services like file manipulation, send a message and set of custom buttons – Access News, Weather, Stocks etc.

• Develop “PET Messenger” as control centers for PET functions– Access MSRC machines; DoD News;

Success Stories; Control IMT Test; invoke director’s meeting …

Typical Virtual Class(Meeting)room • Centra, Placeware, WebEx….

Chat Room

Lecture PageAnnotations(student, teacher)Pointers etc.

Control buttons for Audio/Video/Floor Control etc.

Invoke Quiz

Alert/Raise Hands

index

ASC Review October 24-25 2000

Geoffrey FoxFlorida State University

Department of Computer Science andCSIT (School of Computational Science and Information

Technology)400 Dirac Science Library

TallahasseeFlorida 32306-4130

fox@csit.fsu.edu

Hand Held devices and Wireless• Ubiquitous access to resources from palm-top

devices will new access modes from simple job submission through visualization of results– Control large screen

displays – Banksand Erlebacher

– Support in Gateway forjob submittal

– Collaborative client inresearch or training

– Shared display or Sharedweb-page with differentmodes for each type of device

Collaborative Palm Tops• Shared Display: Share pixels between clients

• Shared Event: Share URL between clients – in general have different versions (WAP for Palm-top, HTML/HTTP for PC’s) of display controlled by same XML content

Web Server

……………..

HTTP-HTMLWAP

Collaboration Server URL or (scaled)frame buffer