Subject: C430 JGSI Review Resent-Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:25:18 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 21:41:57 -0400 From: Tomasz Haupt To: gcf@npac.syr.edu a) publish b) This paper describes a modern multi-tier system to assist the user to construct applications from distributed components, and may be used to construct a problem solving environment (PSE). It is entirely implemented in Java, and uses XML to define all necessary interfaces. Unfortunatelly, the authors do not define what is a component, nor they describe what component model they are following. From examples they provide in the text, one can deduce that they use JavaBeans approach somehow "upgraded" to fit distributed environment. In the title of the paper, they claim to use CORBA for inter-JVM communications, but never discuss it in the text. The neural-network example uses Java-RMI instead. This is definitely a flaw in the presentation of this interesting work. Also, Figure 1 one is hard to interpret: it is not clear which elements of the system comprise a front-end, and what is implemented in middle tier(s). It is not clear to me, whether IRMS ("intelligent resource management system") is a part of VPCE (subject of this paper) or not. Definitely, a natural place for IRMS is the middle tier. Nevertheless, I found the paper very interesting, in particular the idea of a repository of component interfaces specified in XML (with embedded documentation), component user interfaces defined in XML (to be rendered by the front end), and describing the final application as a connectivity graph expressed in XML. All together, it promisses flexibilty and extensibility of the system, and to large extend automated generation of the user front-end allowing the user to visually compose applications from predefined components, including legacy applications wrapped as components. c) this paper is hard to read. The XML specifications are not complete, many aspects are missing. For example, discussion of events it out of context. It happened that I talked to Omar in San Francisco but for unprepared reader it may be confusing.