CEWES MSRC PET ProgramYear 2 Summary
Geoffrey Fox and David Bernholdt
Overview of Year 2
- Core Support (travel, consulting not assoc. with FEs)
- 3 Full-Year Focused Efforts
- Distance Education for Curricula Enhancement
- Management of Large WWW Sites Using Commercial Database Technology
- Web-Linked Databases for Domain-Specific Information Repositories
- 4 Half-Year Focused Efforts
- HPCC Educational CD-ROM
- Parallel CMS Planning
- Object Web RTI Prototype
- Tango for Collaboration and Distance Consulting
Distance Education for Curricula Enhancement
- “Research” Universities deliver courses over the network to “teaching focused” Universities
- Provide students and faculty with access to leading-edge courses
- Use Tango/WebWisdom for synchronous delivery of lectures from SU to JSU
- Pilot for distance training of DoD users.
Architecture of JSU Distance Education
Screenshots of Tango Teaching Tools
JSU CSC 499: Programming for the Web
- Overview of Web Applications and Services
- Relational Databases
- Oracle 7, SQL, PL/SQL, OraPerl, JDBC
Deliverables & Status
- Pilot distance training (Java) at CEWES delivered to JSU using Tango/WebWisdom
- Scheduled: Aug 97 Delivered: 22-25 Jul 97
- JSU CSC 499 taught Fall 97
- Scheduled: Jan 98 Delivered: Aug 97
- Demo for Dr. Ann Miller
- Scheduled: unplanned Delivered: 30 Oct 97
- Assisted in identifying DREN performance problems, subsequently fixed by DREN staff
- Demo for Dr. Singley, Dr. Womble & Dr. Holland
- Scheduled: unplanned Delivered: 4 Dec 97
- Training on “care & feeding” of Tango @ NPAC
- Scheduled: unplanned Delivered: 11-12 Dec 97
- JSU CSC 499 taught Spring 98
- Scheduled: unplanned Delivered: Jan 98
- ~10 person-days on-site at CEWES, ~13 at JSU
Lessons Learned & Future Plans
- Practical experience with synchronous distance education
- Course very popular & well-received
- Numerous improvements to Tango & WebWisdom
- Summarize experience in technnical report currently being written
- For Year 3 plan to expand...
- Deliver graduate-level class to JSU
- JSU deliver “Programming for the Web” to other sites
- Pilot distance training for DoD sites
JSU Presentation
Web-Linked Databases for Domain-Specific Information Repositories
- Information available on the Internet (incl. world-wide web) can be of great value to DoD researchers
- Amount of information is overwhelming & growing
- “Global” WWW search engines are
- Increasingly selective in what they index
- Already too general to be useful in many cases
- Alternative: Domain-specific search engines allow more efficient searching
Components & Technology
- Gather Subsystem: Robot
- Gather, Inspector, Loader, Agent
- Search Subsystem
- Search package, Web interfaces
- TCP/IP and HTTP (CGI, HTML)
Gather Subsystem Data Flow
- Currently gather starting with “master list” of documents to fixed depth in link space
- More sophisticated gathering schemes possible/desirable(?)
Search Subsystem Data Flow
Grid Generation Search Engine
PPT Slide
- Altavista comparison
- ~3500 hits in Advanced Search
- ~25,000 hits in Simple Search
Status
- Installation & setup of indexing engine at CEWES MSRC
- Suitable system not available, so system hosted on NPAC computers
- Grid generation search engine
- Demoed search engine at Joint CTA Workshop on Grid Generation Issues, UT-Austin
- GIS or other search engine
- Development delayed due tolack of feedback on grid search engine & insufficient server resources at NPAC. Additional server hardware being procured
Management of Large WWW Sites Using Commercial Database Technology
- Use database technology to facilitate management of large, diverse web site with content contributions from many people
- Support multiple levels of access (prototype, production)
- Facilitate maintaining currency of web space
- Date of last modification
- Dead link detection
- Orphaned file detection
CEWES MSRC Search Engine & WSMS Prototype
Current Capabilities
- Structural Information
- Size & number of pages in hierarchy
- Number of links, images
- Last modified date
Coming Capabilities
- Queries on structural information
- Last modified date
- References to files
- Identifying “orphaned” files
- Capabilities limited by decision not to deploy full database-based web server on site at CEWES MSRC
A Comment on the Use of Databases in “HPCC”
- Historically, HPCC field has not made much use of commercial software. Especially database systems.
- Elsewhere, databases increasingly viewed as “the right way” to do many things. May require slightly larger initial investment (software, training…), but cheaper over entire life cycle.
- NPAC currently runs four Oracle servers. Question is not whether to add more, but how many more?
- Lack of clear RDBMS buy-in at CEWES MSRC limits these WWW/database projects & possibly other creative and useful applications
Tango for Collaboration and Distance Consulting
- Extend Tango to better support remote collaboration for consulting/user assistance and software development
- Tango collaboratory currently provides audio, video, chat, whiteboard, shared web browser, and other basic tools for collaboration
- Reduce “importance of place” in access to MSRC & PET consulting services, general software development efforts
Status
- Tango server deployed at CEWES
- Experimental server installed on cher, but CEWES may want to designate a different machine as a more permanent server
- Training in operation and use of Tango
- Training in installation, operation & maintenance took place at NPAC 11-12 December
- On-site general training for users to be scheduled
- Tango enhancements
- Shared source code viewer/editor Shared XEmacs
- Shared flow diagramming tool OO Whiteboard
- Intelligent connectors to be added
- Shared debugger XEmacs interface to gdb
- Shared data vis. Through SciVis pkg
- Java MPI performance vis. Not yet addressed
Parallel CMS Planning
- Comprehensive Mine Simulator
- widely-used FMS application
- currently runs on uniprocessor SGI systems, up to 50,000 mines
- target of 1,000,000 mines -- requires HPC
- Project goal: Examine application to understand requirements and effort necessary for parallelization. Produce proposal for actual parallelization effort.
Parallel CMS Planning Status
- First contact with Steve Bishop (CMS Group Leader, Night Vision Lab, Ft. Belvoir) 15 Oct 97
- Wojtek Furmanski visited Steve Bishop 5 Dec 97
- Received CMS source code 12 Feb 98
- Report & Project Proposal for parallelization effort (promised Mar 98, delivery delayed due to time required to obtain license agreement)
Object Web RTI Prototype
- Mid-Year project (go ahead received 8 Dec 97)
- Defense Modeling & Simulation Office pushing move to new High Level Architecture/Real-Time Infrastructure standard
- Trends in web technology and trends in DoD M&S are on converging tracks
- Use web technology (Java/CORBA) to implement RTI
- Facilitate use of web technology by FMS applications, rapid prototyping, easier distributed computing
PPT Slide
Multi-Tier Approach to WebHLA
Status
- Basic JWORB (Java Web Object Request Broker) functional
- Beginning to implement RTI classes
- Expect to deliver Object Web RTI prototype on schedule (March)
JWORB Performance
HPCC Educational CD-ROM
- Description & Benefits
- Leverage educational and training materials in HPC domain from partner universities
- Suitable for asynchronous self-study
- Help users make better decisions about use of HPC resources
- Help users better understand which trainings can be most helpful to them
- Envisioned as on-going project, refining and adding materials each year
HPCC Educational CD-ROM (2)
- Status
- Organized “editorial board”: Jack Dongarra, Ian Foster, Geoffrey Fox, Chuck Koelbel, Joe Thompson, Louis Turcotte
- Draft version of CD-ROM ready (promised Mar’98)
- Request “no cost extension” to improve audio for some CPS615 lectures
- First Edition CD-ROM contents
- Syracuse University CPS615 Lectures “Computational Science for Simulation Applications”
- “Designing and Building Parallel Programs”, by Ian Foster
- “Parallel Computing Works!” by Fox, Messina, and Williams
- No funding for other partners, so no other contributions this edition
PPT Slide
Year 2 In BriefPET-Supported Travel
- CEWES Site Visits
- 21 person-days on site, 7 visits
- Beca, Bernholdt, Fox, Haupt, Klasky, McCracken, Zhu
- Java Training
- Jackson State University visits
- 13 person-days on site, 3 trips
- McCracken, Podgorny, Scavo, Stachowiak
- HPC Users Group Meeting (Bernholdt, Fox)
- Cross-MSRC Training Working Group (Fox)
- Visits by CEWES to NPAC
- ~8 person-days NPAC staff effort, 3 trips
Training & Education
- Java Training delivered at CEWES MSRC TEF and remotely to JSU
- “Introduction to Web Programming” (JSU CSC 499) taught Fall’97, Spring’98
Technology Transfer
- Tango Collaboration System
- Installed in CEWES MSRC TEF
- Installed in JSU Dist. Ed. Classrooms
- Trained John Eberle & Mike Robinson in the “care & feeding” of Tango
- Two demos for high-level HPCMO, DoD, and gov’t personnel
- Success of Tango has resulted in a serious “robustification” effort
- Web-Linked Databases
- Grid Generation Search Engine
- CEWES MSRC Search Engine
- Hosted on NPAC computers
Highlights
- Bringing leading-edge web tools and technology to the Modernization Program, MSRC users, and PET partners
- Tango Interactive collaboration system deployed to CEWES MSRC and JSU
- Success of Tango in CEWES & other projects has spurred serious “robustification” effort to move Tango from “research” tool to “near-commercial” quality tool
- Distance Education effort with JSU far exceeded expectations
- Delivered two full semester courses (one planned)
- Demos provided for high-level DoD & gov’t personnel