[CAnet - news] Cyber-infrastructure for undersea instruments and networks

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
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[Excellent example of the use of cyber-infrastructure Service Oriented
Architecture using web services and workflow for management and control of
undersea instruments and networks.  Of particular note is that Alcatel who
is building the Neptune undersea backbone fiber network will also be using
SOA for the management and control of the network facilities. Because both
the network and the instruments can now be represented as web services
various exciting new possibilities are possible in terms of providing user
control of both data, instruments and networks.  For more examples please
see www.uclp.ca and for commercial products please see
http://www.inocybe.ca/-- BSA]

http://www.neptunecanada.ca/news/documents/NC_Newsletter_2007Feb14.pdf

In September 2005, DMAS was awarded a grant from the CANARIE Intelligent
Infrastructure Program (CIIP) for a project called: “Toward a Service
Oriented Architecture and Workflow Management for VENUS and NEPTUNE”. The
goals of this project were to provide these two high profile Canadian Cabled
Ocean Observatories with an integrated scientific instruments management
system, the capability to deliver event information to users, as well as
integrated access to distributed compute and data resources through the use
of innovative technologies.

The initial draft of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) was proposed by
IBM Canada, one of the largest R&D investors in Canada. This architecture
was later refined by the Data Management Archive System (DMAS) team. It
is worth mentioning that this is also the approach taken by Alcatel for the
interaction with the NEPTUNE backbone.

This style of information systems architecture enables the NEPTUNE Canada
and VENUS DMAS to be built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable
services. The IBM Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with its underlying message
system WebSphere MQ provides the features such as point-to-point data
delivery and message publish-and subscribe to implement the DMAS SOA.

A wide range of Web Services has been developed by the DMAS team and it will
continue to add more, especially in the area of instrument control and
monitoring. One of the most interesting Web Services offered is the device
service which allows remote interaction with the instruments under water
using either a web page on the NEPTUNE Canada web site or custom
applications written by scientists or engineers. The Science Instrument
Interface Modules (SIIM) - now called Junction Boxes- can be controlled from
a simple web interface allowing authorized engineers to open or close a port
to which instruments are connected. Other Web Services deliver observatory
metadata or sample data to users.

Over the last few months, the DMAS team has developed a number of new
features, some of which are already in production while others are still in
the ‘incubator’ and will be released in the coming weeks. Karen Tang, one of
the DMAS developers, has built an example of scientific workflow using the
Kepler software, a product built on top of the Ptolemy II system of the
University of California, Berkeley. The example, illustrated below, performs
an oxygen sensor data analysis using DMAS Web Services. Darry Bidulock,
another team member, has just completed the new gallery to show the VENUS
camera images and the hydrophone data. This allows scientists around the
world to view pictures, movies and spectra, or listen to sound taken by
instruments with a delay of just a few minutes. The user
interface ‘à la You tube’ is very easy to use and will be the basis for all
displayable products of NEPTUNE Canada and
VENUS. These products will also soon be available using RSS feeds.

Yigal Rachman, our data acquisition developer, is now working on a top of
the line data acquisition framework (DAF) which should be in place this
summer. The DAF presents a range of new challenges such as the support for
thousands of sensors and the direct access by engineers and scientists using
Web Services.

All these new features would not have been possible without the support of
the CANARIE project, which helped us build the underlying infrastructure. As
a result of CANARIE’s support, the newest technologies available in the IT
world, and the work accomplished in 2005–06 NEPTUNE Canada will establish a
leading position in the Big Science


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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.

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