Focused Effort Title: Palm Navigator for Time Series from Remote HPC Simulation via FSU Portal using Oracle 8i Enterprise Technologies Organization: Syracuse University/Florida State University Thematic Area(s): HPC Training and DoD User Productivity Lead: Wojtek Furmanski/Geoffrey Fox Email Address: furm@npac.syr.edu Telephone: 315 443 1799 Fax: 315 443 1973 Statement of Work: Several recent advances in enterprise computing can be naturally adapted and customized for building robust, industry standard based environments for high performance distributed computation. Examples include multi-tier architectures (Object Web), distributed objects (CORBA, COM+), new high level programming languages (Java, XML), or - most recently - Web Portal technologies. At the FSU, we are developing a general portal technology framework (http://www.new- npac.org/users/fox/documents/generalportalmay00/erdcportal.html ) for Web based Education and Computational Science which builds on top of the most promising enterprise computing and open source technologies. Our framework is based on modular N-tier architecture, it uses distributed objects (such as CORBA) in the middleware, it unifies cross-tier communication in terms of XML, and it aimes at some uniform message queuing and distributed event service paradigm across all portal components. One of the advantages of our architecture is that various promising front-end, middleware or backend technologies coming from the rapidly evolving enteprise computing domain can be naturally plugged in, experimented with, and adapted when needed. In this project, we propose to explore our portal framework for evaluating and including selected mobile technologies, represented by handheld devices such as PDAs or smartphones that are intermittently connected to the Internet and are 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 PC, 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. Oracle 8I offers several useful 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) XML based Portal-to-Go. These Oracle 8i components can be viewed as specific instances of our general concepts, integrated within the FSU portal framework, and including: distributed objects based middleware; uniform XML communication; and unified event/messaging/queuing frameowk. 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, packages 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 connect 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 Palm Navigator for Time Series from Remote HPC Simulation" will be constructed within our general FSU portal framework by using and integrating 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. Our Palm Time-Series Navigator will be packaged as a CORBA component and, as such, it will naturally cooperate in a plug-and-play style via the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) with other ORB modules within the FSU portal framework. Deliverables: * Working prototype of Palm based navigator of time-series, generated by a remote HPC simulation and maintained by Oracle 8I database; * Modular implementation of the prototype in terms of Oracle middleware technologies such as Portal-to-Go, Oracle 8I Lite, and Advanced Queuing; * Overall packaging of the prototype as a CORBA module that can smoothly cooperate with other sectors of the FMS portal framework such as Gateway; * Presentations at the Pet Mid-Year and Annual Reviews; * Final technical report by the end of Year 5; * Inputs to the PET Annual Report; * Assistance with installation of the system at ERDC MSRC if desired. Required Resources: $61,594 Item Base Fringe Wojtek Furmanski 13,884 4,735 Grad. Student 7,490 951 Tuition 7,356 - Materials & Supplies 1,200 - SU Overhead 14,392 FSU Subcontract Over. 11,625 TOTAL 61,594