An Overview of The National Information Infrastructure for Industry with Special Attention to Manufacturing -- Presentation to ASOP NII Requirements Workshop July 26 NASA Langley Geoffrey C. Fox NPAC Syracuse University 111 College Place Syracuse NY 13244-4100 Abstract of NII for ASOP Presentation This overview was part of a NASA sponsored workshop at Langley involving MADIC (Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design Industrial Consortium) Team 2, NASA, Georgia Tech, Rice and NPAC. This reported on initial conclusions on requirements for and value of NII technology in ASOP (Affordable Systems Optimization Process) -- a novel approach to Multidisciplinary Optimization for aircraft and other complex system design. ASOP intrinsically involves world wide collaboration between several large aerospace corporations and tens of thousands of suppliers and so the NII can have major value both for supporting collaboration between people and for supporting the thousands of linked optimizations -- each involving several different programs. We stress the rapid evolution of the Web and the ability of Web Technology to be applied to Enterprise Inforemation Systems such as that required to manage ASOP. MADIC companies involved include Rockwell, General Motors, Northrop-Grumman-Vought, Lockheed-Martin and General Electric. Architecture of Web Software Application Specific NII Specific Services for Education HealthCare Commerce Manufacturing etc. Some Recent Web Developments WebMagic -- HTML editor which essentially integrates server and Netscape client on a single computer for fast client stand-alone editing. VRML which is a 3D data structure which could be used in display of ASOP physical artifacts. It is based on open subset of SGI Inventor database technology. VRML viewers are just coming out JAVA has just been released by a group in Sun and in some ways competes with VRML (viewers). It is a Client technology which includes a C++ subset interpreter allowing clients to spawn processes called Applets. This makes clients "intelligent" and largely indistinguishable in functionality with servers. Note future Web Architecture will be Server-Server. Not Client-Server. Web Application Software Vision A Set of Application domains and each with its own natural (interpreted) language manipulating domain-specific data structures. WebScript links the domains together Examples are: PERL for world of Text (PERL includes C(++), UNIX shell and text processing Awk and Sed capabilities) JAVA for constructing browsers VRML is data structure for 3D objects which are viewed by VRML viewers WebHPF is Interpreted distributed High Performance Fortran used in CFD simulation, structures etc. (for ASOP) Web AVS is Web implementation of AVS(Khoros) and can be used for coarse grain software integration WebASOP is designed to translate between different disciplines (uses some version of PDES/STEP product specification data structures) and link all the 10,000 different programs/expert systems etcx. Some Relevant NII Services-I Desktop Publishing and Productivity Tools in WebWindows (WebTop Productivity/Publishing) Webmail, WebWord, WebLOTUS123, WebPersuasion etc. InfoVision: Delivery on Demand of Information from: Digital archives of latest CNN, Reuters and network video 100,000 hours of archives of video from last few years requiring some 100 terabyte of storage Simulations of expected lake effect snow storm in Syracuse This is storage, search and dissemination of multimedia Digital libraries Commerce -- digital Cash and signatures with appropriate authentication and security. Enables both Web Commerce (shopping) and use of Web for proprietary information Some Relevant NII Services-II Interactive and "batch" Collaboration Desktop Video conferencing to 3 dimensional graphic MOOs -- these lead to full televirtual interactions White boards etc. Collaboratories -- Geographically distributed Laboratories Workflow and configuration controlled databases This leads to Software Engineering on the Web Metacomputing -- the collection of world wide computers as a coordinated (in subgroups of computers) computational engine (for simulation or information processing) Includes control of remote medical and scientific instruments Searching the world for Information Running a coarse grain decomposed simulation between ASOP sites around world Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- HealthCare and Telemedicine This is distributed databases for supporting cost effective healthcare with less fraud, better use of existing information for establishing care-plans etc This is collaboration, remote instrument control for telemedicine Could be full televirtuality for virtual-reality controlled remote surgery in battlefield or accident scenarios Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Education This is basis of Virtual University and NII can be expected to be much more succesful than videosystems because interactive, collaborative, explorative and full multimedia information at student and teachers fingertips Base of Distance Education is InfoVision for full interactive curricula Note hyperlinking is as important as multimedia as allows student controlled exploration in richer fashion than old fashioned sequential books Geographic Information Systems allows the general virtual field trip Rich Collaboration environments including televirtual MOO's for student-student and student-teacher interactions Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Society InfoVision is "successor" to TV with any multimedia information delivered on demand( choice from infinite number of channels) Community Networks will define local societies and will have significant impact on local government Shopping on the Web will include multimedia digital yellow pages , Commerce, online catalogs (which is InfoVision again) as well as perhaps powerful VR interfaces where you can try out new clothes and cars Collaboration (gossip as in computer forums) could be an important and dominant use but perhaps not initial major one Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Business (Enterprise Systems) OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) such as approving and recording credit card transactions. This is a type of InfoVision and Commerce which is operational today Has major security and reliability demands but undemanding on computer and network Decision Support varies from fraud detection, inventory planning and market segmentation for optimizing shopping by mail Decision support can vary from search of a single giant relational database to galaxy-wide search of heterogeneous distributed database Workflow Support as in LOTUS Notes integrates Collaboration, Project Management and Distributed Databases. This supports ongoing distributed enterprise -- this is also essential in collaboratory Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Defence and Crisis Management Critical feature is realtime, "come as you are" adaptive linked computers and people Judgement support extends decision support into an "exploratorium" scenario as crises tend to be unexpected Major need to search community and government databases for immediate information on resource location and availability etc. Metadata(summaries) essential Collaboration between commander in field , specialized anchor desks (domain experts) and those in field. User Interface essential as user will be tired and searching unfamiliar data Geographical Information Systems and browsing multiple video sources (InfoVision again) will be critical as judgements will depend critically on spatial data. Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Collaboratory This is future model for (inter)national distributed research Rich Collaboration environment essential as collaborative research requires nontrivial person to person interactions Searching distributed databases basis of much scholarly work (infoVision and Digital Library) Metacomputing for multidisciplinary, multi-institutional simulations and for control and data storage and analysis from remote instruments whether satellites, telescopes, accelerators etc. Distributed (people) Software Engineering support for production of distributed computing software Needs workflow support as distributed enterprise Use of NII Services in Particular Applications -- Manufacturing of Complex Systems Critical feature is closely integrated collaboration of very many people and computers requiring Metacomputing Simulation and distributed database support as in Collaboratory Workflow support including configuration management and central CAD databases Rich collaboration environment to support distributed design decisions Standards and Security to allow interlinking of people and software from different organizations Key special requirement is distributed coordination ASOP and Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design(MAD) A set of manufacturing companies -- Rockwell International, Northrop Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, General Electric and General Motors is studying the NII implications for a particular MAD system "Affordable Systems Optimization Process" (ASOP) Interesting parameters are that next major aircraft to be built could involve: 6 major companies and 20,000 smaller supplier subcontractors Number of engineers involved is about: 50 at conceptual design 200 at preliminary design 2000 at final design upto 10,000 in manufacturing and development The design could involve upto 10,000 separate programs running in small linked clusters which vary from Airflow simulation around plane to expert system to plan location of inspection port to minimize maintenance costs Critical is configuration management and system database Overall Base Structure for ASOP Technology Demonstrations ASOPnet -- physical network infrastructure -- presumably constructed from linking existing infrastructure from government and commercial sources Needed general capabilities (WebWindows) of NII and Generic NII Services including some such as metacomputing and configuration control where ASOP has driving requirements ASOP Information Infrastructure (AII) which are NII services tailored and presented for ASOP ASOP Infrastructure ASOPnet Requirements Link Collaboraters by communication system ASOPnet -- a microcosm of the NII Industry Sites Collaborating Universities -- Georgia Tech,Syracuse and .... NASA and other key government sites Use COTS (World wide Web) Software and Systems where-ever possible and so physical network should not have special features not supported by "Open NII" Security (proprietary data) needs to be determined Parts should have performance (ATM ) needed by high speed distributed applications Appropriate database/storage and compute servers needed on ASOPnet ASOP Technology Demonstrations -- NII Services Evaluate, Install, Maintain, Enhance as necessary WebWindows and base NII Services Security -- special needs of large data transfer of proprietary information Object and Database services including access, search, dissemination and especially configuration control Collaboration services including linking of people, computation and databases in configuration controlled systems engineering environment Metacomputing services linking many thousands of programs (with wrappers/agents to allow re-use of existing code) in distributed groups as needed for specific multi-disciplinary optimizations