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The Rising Power of the Web Browser:

Douglas du Boulay, Clinton Chee, Romain Quilici, Peter Turner, Mathew Wyatt.

Part of a collaboration between Adelaide University, Indiana University, James Cook University, State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, and the University of Sydney.

Web Services Based Collaborative Remote Instrument Control and Monitoring

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• Web services (WS) provide a platform and location independent means of exchanging information between distributed resources.

• The specification of a Web service includes the nature of the application interface and the nature of message passed between the applications and resources.

• WS typically exchange information or messages with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). A SOAP message is an XML eXtensible Markup Language) parcel that typically runs over HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

• The nature of the Web service (resource or application) and its interface is identified in an associated XML based Web Services Definition Language (WSDL: www.w3.org/TR/wsdl) message. Applications (legacy or otherwise) written in differing programming languages and running across heterogeneous platforms can use Web services to exchange data over the internet

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Advantages of Web services:

• Location, computer platform and computer language independent. Facilitates legacy code re-use.

• Integration of the instrument into the Web (and Grid)

• Grid friendly (can build a Grid using Web services)

• Robust security model (WS-Security supports security tokens and certificates)

• Use of HTTP as the underlying Web transport protocol facilitates firewall passage (through port 80)

• Supports Service Orientated Architectures (SOAs). Can integrate remote services (standalone client applications, Web applications, command line tools, portal servcies, Grid resources and services) into project/user specific interfaces.

• Facilitates the linkage of multiple users and resources for collaborative interactions across the Web.

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• Web services can be used by stand-alone applications and interfaces – e.g. ANSTO’s GUMTree user interface could drive applications using Web services.

• Web services are well suited to supporting and enabling Web portal based services, with the user interface then being provided by portlets embedded in a Web browser.

• So called Web 2.0 technology is enabling the Web as an applications platform, and is changing the original role of the Web browser. For instance;

- AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) introduces a capability for a browser to function in a similar manner to a stand-alone GUI. In particular portlet specific dynamic ‘refresh’ of browser content,

- Pushlets allow information/data to be continuously pushed to a browser – in effect over-turning the original browser get ‘paradigm’.

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Together with the use of AJAX, Pushlets and GridSphere portal/portlet software, we’ve been implementing and extending CIMA (Common Instrument Middleware Architecture) as a basis for building Web services driven portal services for remote access. is used to provide the portal-portlets infrastructure.

CIMA offers:

A general and re-usable Web services framework for instrument access and management.

Flexible and extensible with modular use of plug-ins. Abstraction of instrument function. Adaptable to different instrument settings. Standard programmable interface.

Publish-subscribe or registration model.

Basis for a standardised implementation/deployment system.

Grid enablement of instruments made accessible with Web service protocols.

Container A

Portlets Container

Collaborator

Operator

Control

Monitor

Monitor

Several simultaneous

users.

Only one administrator.

Data cache

Container B

Web Services Container

CIMA Component

CIMA Component

Instruments

Pushed Data:XML Parcels

1) Requests:XML Parcels

2) Responses:XML Parcels

SO

AP

SO

AP

Dynamic Content Pushed:

Pushlets & AJAX

Data Manager

SRB

Pushed Data:XML Parcels

SOAP

Web Services Container

Collaborator

Container A

Portlets Container

Collaborator

Operator

CollaboratorControl

Monitor

Monitor

Several simultaneous

users.

Only one Administrator

Data cache

Container B

Web Services Container

CIMA Component

CIMA Component

Instruments

Pushed Data:XML Parcels

1) Requests:XML Parcels

2) Responses:XML Parcels

Web Services Container

SO

AP

SO

AP

Dynamic Content Pushed:

Pushlets & AJAX

Data Manager

SRB

Pushed Data:XML Parcels

SOAP

Browser Driven Instrument Control

Browser Driven Instrument Simulator

Instrument Monitor

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Acknowledgements:

Sydney Uni JCU Indiana and SUNY Douglas du Boulay Ian M. Atkinson Rick McMullen Clinton Chee Tristan King Ken Chiu Richard Leow Nigel G.D. SimRomain Quilici Mathew Wyatt

Australian Research Council: e-Research Seed Funding Programme and the Research Networks Programme (MMSN: Molecular and MaterialsStructure Network).

Department of Education Science and Training: Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility, and Annotation e-Research Technologies (DART) project

GrangeNet: The Integration of Scientific Instruments into the Grid