Subject: palm-oracle proposal for erdc Resent-Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 07:48:12 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 04:53:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Wojtek Furmanski To: Geoffrey Fox CC: Wojtek Furmanski , "David E. Bernholdt" Portal-to-Go based Mobile Palm Navigator for Time Series from Remote HPC Simulation Several recent advances in enterprise computing can be naturally adapted and customized for building robust, industry standard based environments for high performance distributed computation. Typical examples include multi-tier architectures (Object Web), distributed objects (CORBA, COM+) or new high level programming languages (Java, XML). In this project, we propose to extend this suite by the recent mobile technologies, represented by handheld devices such as PDAs or smartphones, connected to the Internet and cooperating with Oracle 8i based multi-tier multi-language object-relational enterprise systems. We will initially focus on Palm PDA as currently the most popular handheld platform with some 75% market share in U.S., and we will assume Palmtop-Laptop hotsync as the currently most practical Internet connectivity mode. However, the approach presented here extends naturally to the coming generation of wireless technologies and several mobile devices and platforms, starting from Palm OS based Palm organizers and including also Windows CE based Pocket PCs, EPOC based Symbian/Psion devices or WAP based smartphones. Typical use cases addressed in this project include monitoring or steering some large scale HPC simulation, running remotely at a MSRC, in terms of mobile Palm devices, intermittently connected to the net. A natural systematic monitoring framework can be established by instructing the HPC simulation to generate and periodically update a backlog of timestamped control messages. We further assume that such a time series is to be maintained by Oracle 8i database cooperating with the simulation backend and is to be made accessible anywhere, anytime by multiple mobile clients. As an initial implementation of the 'net computing' vision, Oracle 8i offers several technology components that facilitate the process of mobile monitoring of a backend time series. These technologies, to be researched, adapted and integrated towards a working prototype in the course of this project, include: a) Oracle Application Server (OAS); b) Time Series Architecture; c) Oracle 8i Lite; d) Replication and Advanced Queuing (AQ); e) Portal-to- Go. In the following, we briefly characterize these technologies and we discuss their integration to be conducted by the proposed project. Oracle Application Server represents Oracle 8i middleware - it acts as a Web server, a CORBA broker, a gateway to Oracle database server, and a plug-and-play software bus for multi-language (C++, Java, PL/SQL, Cobol, Perl etc.) components that implement application-specific business logic, packaged as Oracle Cartridges. Time Series Architecture provides support for storage, retrieval and analysis of timestamped data. Auxiliary calendar objects are used to map human-meaningful time concepts such as temporal frequencies, patterns, date ranges, lookback windows etc. to the underlying machine representations. A set of analytic and administrating functions is provided that facilitates time series data analysis and management. Replication and Advanced Queuing (AQ) assures data coherency and synchronization between multiple, occasionally disconnected layers or tiers of Oracle 8i based mobile enterprise systems. AQ is a store-and-forward application messaging service that aggregates messages during the disconnect phase and automatically synchronizes after the connection is re-established. Oracle 8i Lite is a small footprint version of Oracle 8i, optimized for mobile devices such as laptops or PDAs. Synchronization between laptop and central database is assured by the iConnect AQ Lite, whereas the iConnect Consolidator facilitates development of conduits to hotsync between the PDA (such as Palm) and Oracle database formats. Portal-to-Go is a new server component of Oracle Internet Platform that enables any existing database or Internet application to be made accessible from any handheld devices connected to the Internet such as: WAP smartphones, wireless PDAs such as Palm VII, standard phones connected to Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) systems, modem equipped personal organizers, set-top- boxes etc. Portal-to-Go components include: adapters that convert HTML of RDBMS content to the standardized intermediate XML representation; transformers that convert such XML to the appropriate device markup languages; services (such as WAP gateways, hotsync consolidators etc.) that deliver transformed data to mobile devices. Portal-to-Go transformers (given by XSLT stylesheets or Java modules) offer support for WML (WAP Forum), TinyHTML (Palm), VoxML (Motorola), TTML (Nokia), HDML (Phone.com) and VoiceXML (VoiceXML Forum). Portal- to-Go uses common XML representation given by SimpleResult DTD and based on SimpleContainer/Simple Component model with SimpleText, SimpleMenu, SimpleForm and SimpleTable as components. Our proposed "Portal-to-Go based Mobile Palm Navigator for Time Series from Remote HPC Simulation" will use and integrate the Oracle 8i components listed above in the following way. Our HPC application and its Time Series Backlog will be packaged as two standardized modules (such as CORBA components or Enterprise Java Beans) that are pluggable into the Oracle Application Server software bus. This way, we can factor out the application specific modules and focus on the standardized and reusable time series module to be monitored by mobile devices. We will initially use laptop to provide standard modem based Web connectivity and we will hotsync our palm with the laptop. However, we will use Portal-to-Go technologies to assure forward-compatibility with other devices and the coming wireless connectivity. Our laptop will run Oracle 8i Lite and it will be synchronized with the central database (maintaining the time series module) via the AQ Lite service. All communication between laptop and central database will be based on XML messages conforming to the SimpleResult DTD used by Portal-to-Go. Mobile users will be able to hotsync their palms anytime, anywhere with the remote simulation, navigate the associated time series using the standard Palm controls and to adjust the monitoring parameters such as data ranges, lookback windows or temporal resolution of the control messages.