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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
THE POSSIBILITIES OF 'WEB
SERVICES'
Though the term "Web Services" is familiar with many technical and
engineering
experts on college campuses, many people may be unsure as to what the term
actually means.
The term refers to objects, data, or programming that can be connected,
mixed
and/or re-used regardless of their location or usage elsewhere on the Web. In
addition, complex coding is not necessary to use them in a host application or
platform. A real estate company in Montana using a mortgage calculator that is
hosted by a bank in New York is an example of a Web service.
Researchers, instead of contacting each other and then having to reformat
the
information so that all can read it, are able to publish their own data as a
Web service to then be read individually by colleagues.
Web services, though a seemingly new and emerging effort, has been present
since the first standards (HTTP, XML, WSDL, SOAP) for interoperability were
written. These standards are now evolving to support business integration
across desktops, campuses and/or governments.
Businesses use Web services for IT outsourcing. Sending utility processing
(data crunching, back-up or payroll processing) to third-party service
providers is much easier through the use of Web services. The back office is
now becoming a shared resource.
University and college campuses are also utilizing Web services for their
benefit. The iCampus program is a perfect example; MIT and Microsoft provide
academic and administrative services to a large group of campus users by
employing Web services in various projects. Microsoft's .NET technology is
used as a Web services framework.
iLab, for example, is MIT's creation using .NET services to form a
Web-based
microelectronics lab which is not a simulation, but a reality. In this way,
students can work remotely on their required lab assignments.
The work has improved the time it takes to complete the lab immensely --
five
minutes compared to an hour -- and a higher rate of equipment usage has also
been documented. Students can control inputs from the server and can send
signal transmissions from their dorm rooms to transistors in the lab.
MIT plans to further the development of remote labs with .NET web services.
Six or seven new labs are presently being created.
These resource sharing services may have tremendous economic saving
capabilities as well. MIT is touting the experiment as a model for how a
consortium of universities might host lab servers for common core sciences and
share the costs. They are seeking to implement centralized management and
control services to scale online labs across various universities.
Another Web service project at MIT involves the same principle, but with an
administrative application. The writing test issued to all incoming freshmen
was made available to students through the Internet a few years ago. Students
are now given a certain amount of time to complete assigned readings, write an
essay, and return it to the school.
An organization of six universities now runs the system, which requires
some
management infrastructure to sustain authentication and notification. Other
universities are now interested in administering similar tests and
services.
In addition, MIT uses a system run on a Web services platform to make
course
content available for free via the Internet. MIT uses Microsoft's Content
Management Systems to tie Linux servers together. This allows Linux and
Microsoft servers to operate together on a Web services platform.
Tying together a wide variety of faculty and staff data can be very
challenging, but Web services can serve as a foundation to standardize it all.
Corel's Smart Graphics Studio lets Web developers create Web services
applications from a graphical environment. They can mark information as
dynamic, identify data flow processes, and choose how to that data is
represented also.
Web services is hoped to pick off where the dot com era left off, with
everything moving to the web via an underlying service-based architecture in
place to make the idea a reality.
It is hoped that open and dynamic business processes driven by end-users
can
begin to take shape through Web service technologies. Though the focus at
present is on integrating data and introducing simple applications, an
innovative and collaborative environment will soon take shape.
An X Campus where users can interact and collaborate integrated systems and
information remains a feasible possibility.
Scalable Vector Graphics is a standard helping to enable Web services
adoption. XML-based vector graphics integrated into Smart Graphics Studio can
be described via SVG. SVG is used to associate data with a graphical object.
By "data-driving" with Web services, the objects can then represent changes in
data over time.
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