Activities in Common Portal Architecture
1) Experience with Tango and Gateway
   We have tested our technology and ideas in several ways this year
   Tango has continued to be used for distance education each semester while
   we also built a prototype system using it to link desktop and hand-held devices.
   Our computing portal Gateway first used portalML/resource ML double interface
   which came out of the work of the computing portal forum. Gateway is
   currently being evaluated in chemistry applications. Our new architecture
   is partially motivated by the necessity of being able to generate portals
   for new applications more efficiently and robustly than now.
   We do not think either Tango or Gateway are the "correct systems" to deploy
   for the next round. Rather we should learn lessons from these succesful
   prototypes

2) Meetings Papers Conferences
   We have written material up as a book chapter to be published
   by the American Geophysical Union to be published later this year. See
   http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/gempapermarch00/
   We have attended the Alliance portal meetings in October 99 and February 00 as
   well as the Computing Portals meeting attached to ISCOPE December 7 99 We gave
   an invited talk at the PAJava conference in Machester April 00 and our paper
   and presentation are online. See
   http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/pajavaapril00/ and
   http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/presentations/pajavaapril00/
   We gave a two talk linking education technology and education at the Alliance
   MSI meeting this May in Washington.
   http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/presentations/msicsitedmay00/index.htm
   http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/presentations/msiedportalmay00/index.htm
   
3) Architecture work
   We have re-examined both portals and collaboration systems and come up with a
   new architecture for a collaborative portal that addresses the requirements
   discovered from the first generation systems. These reports are online
   a) http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/collabcompmay00/
   b) http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/generalportalmay00/
   c) http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/wapmay00/
   d) http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/erdctraining.pdf
   They cover respectively a) collaborative computing and visualization 
   b) portals architecture and services c) integration of hand-held devics
   and d) experience in distance education using Tango
  
  Essential features of our new architecture are
  1) Use of a "personal server" whose interfaces are defined in portalML and
	 define user view of system. This controls user customization, layout etc, We
	 succesfully used in our Gateway system the two distinct XML interfaces portal
	 ML is the user view of objects and services while resourceML is the system
	 view. This does not seem such a novel idea but its importance is underestimated
	 perhaps. For instance the two major proposals for education onjects do not
	 make this distinction and we think this will prove a limitation for them.
  2) The personal server(s) communicate with conventional middle tier where "resourceML"
     (as defined by IMS/ADL SCORM for education and Grid Forum for computing) defines objects
  3) Personal server includes much of the code that we put in browser for our older systems
     Tango and Gateway. The new architecture produces a more robust system and makes it easier to drive
     different client side renderings (desktop, palmtop or Cave (PowerWall at FSU)) from
     a common server with essential logic
  4) A federated (client and server side) XML-based event system with backend
	 database store supporting both asynchronous access and synchronous multicast
	 of events between clients. This leads to robust support of synchronous and
	 asynchronous colaboration.
  5) Designed to allow integration of outside modules such as Access Grid or
	 RealNetwork audio-video conferencing technology. We also want to include
	 commercial objects such as those from Blackboard Lotus and WebCT in
	 education area. This is the hardest problem we think -- the Internet world
	 is now so sophisticated that you cannot hope to build a complete system.
	 Rather one must have a collaborative framework and integrate capabilities
	 from multiple sources

Several Presentations and Internal Memos can be found at:
http://aspen.csit.fsu.edu/collabtools/