User Interfaces for PSE's

Elias Houstis
Granville Sewell El Paso
Robert Nelson LLNL/SPDC
Candrajit Bajaj Purdue

Houstis Presentation

* Scalability -- too many grid points to display
* and in aerospace design, have 300,000 parameters for 10,000 programs

- One user can't set all these
- AI system to help

* Computational servers as new library model
* Softlab project develops virtual laboratory for two Purdue projects.
* SciencePad -- Laboratory Notebook built on top of web browser

Bajaj Presentation

* Working on Visible Human Project
* Has his own environment SHASTRA
* Used to design Prosthesis
* Problem Solving in the large to support collaboration between groups of experts

PDE2D Sewell

* PDE2D based on Protran

- IMSL abandoned Protran

* Protran was script based and translated into Fortran
* PDE2D has an interactive Interface and skips script -- it generates readable Fortran

- Interface is ascii question and answer -- not GUI

* This Fortran repeats comments so code is self documenting -- Interesting

Graphical versus Scripting Interfaces

* Visual C++ puts everything into icons -- Nelson considers this as a disaster

- GUI should give you a menu access to complex set of scientific concepts

* Thompson noted scripted Eagle grid generation system was not popular in Industry as they needed a GUI even though Eagle more fun

- MSU built GUI on top of scripting system to make Eagle more acceptable

* Purdue uses C++ and VX(?)

Questions from the audience - I

* Do you need AI based reasoning techniques to customize interfaces for each different group of users?
* PDE's have too many parameters to display all options

- Need to arrange into subsets

* What is Idiom that describes PSE environment that best represents scientific problem solving?

Questions from the Audience-- II

* Sincovec notes that real problems require data from around the world -- advocates WebWork!
* Require multiple cooperating laboratories
* Need support for comparing computations with experimental results

- So easy to go wrong as no guaranteed correct solution scheme for most real PDE's
- Thompson says we have ethical need to make certain PSE's give reliable results

Questions from the
Audience-- III

* Sherman says people seem to claim that all too specialized and so no viable commercial business plan
* Thompson and Sherman say should hide grid -- this is a artifact and not the physical problem