Collaboration in the Virtual Laboratory for eScience

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Collaboration in the Virtual Laboratory for
e-Science

• Alexander de Ridder
• adridder_at_science.uva.nl
• Supervisor
• Adam Belloum
• adam_at_science.uva.nl

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Goals

• Identify list of requirements that can improve
  collaboration within the Virtual Laboratory
  environment
• Propose an architecture of the collaborative
  system
• Identify a collaborative toolkit to aid in the
  development of a simple prototype of the
  architecture
• Develop a simple prototype of the proposed
  architecture

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Contents

• Introduction to the Virtual Laboratory
• Analyzing Collaboration
• Analyzing Requirements
• Architecture
• Collaborative Toolkits
• Results
• Conclusion Future Work

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Introduction to the Virtual Laboratory for
e-Science
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e-Science

• e-Science is about global collaboration in key
  areas of science, and the next generation of
  infrastructure that will enable it.
• - John Taylor (2001)
• global collaboration
• sharing
• working together towards joint goal
• infrastructure
• Grid

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Grid Technology

• Share resources on global scale
• Available through toolkits
• Grid shifting towards Service Oriented
  Architecture
• Fault tolerance
• Code reuse
• Grid allows for Grid-Service
• Stateful Services
• Notifications

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The Virtual Lab. for e-Science

• Follow up of VLAM-G
• Provide layer between applications and Grid
• Provide shared workspace for experiments
• Session online VL-e experiment
• ? Sharing of resources Grid
• Working together our focus

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Analyzing Collaboration
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Communication

• Important aspect Communication
• Face-to-Face collaboration ? communication
  complex
• Face-to-Face not possible ? via media (phone,
  mail)
• Removes (important) information
• Groupware Computer-based applications which
  allow collaboration

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Shared WorkspaceEnvironments

• Shared Workspace
• Synchronous collaboration
• What You See Is What I See (WYSIWIS)
• Strict lacks freedom, but awareness
• Relaxed freedom, but decreased awareness

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Failure of CollaborativeSystems (1)

• Many reasons, including
• Social differences
• E.g. Different culture
• Wrong type of application
• Should benefit everybody
• Failure to support basic necessities

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Failure of CollaborativeSystems (2)

• Basic necessities
• Provide the means for intentional and appropriate
  verbal communication
• ? exchange words
• IMs, newsgroups, message boards
• Provide the means for intentional and appropriate
  gestural communication
• ? gestures
• Telepointers
• Provide protection
• ? simultaneous access to objects
• Concurrency control
• Facilitate finding collaborators and establishing
  contact
• ? contacting people
• Userlist

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List of Requirements

• Basic Requirements
• Session control, Exploration of the space or of a
  set of artifacts, Telepointer, Userlist, Instant
  Messenger
• Creation of new artifacts, Organization of
  existing artifacts, Concurrency control,
  Workspace control, Secure environment, Fault
  tolerance, Secondary View
• Enhanced Collaboration
• Asynchronous communication, Feedback /
  feedthrough, undo/redo
• Provide audio communication,

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Analyzing Requirements
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Concurrency Control (1)

• Activity of coordinating potentially
  interfering actions of processes that operate in
  parallel
• - Greenberg
• Concurrency control method
• Locking
• Non-optimistic policy wait for lock
• ? slow, but safe
• Optimistic policy approval granted straight away
• ? fast, but error correction

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Concurrency Control (2)

• VL-e
• Delay vs. irrational behavior
• Provide awareness to reduce conflicts
• Fast Network ? non-optimistic policy possible
• Slow Network ? needs optimistic policy

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Userlist

• Userlist Functionality
• Finding users
• Determine availability
• Contacting users
• Basis for communication other media

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Instant Messenger

• Instant Messengers
• Good Side
• Informal communication
• Plausible deniability of presence
• Synchronous and asynchronous communication
• Socializing
• Bad Side
• Lack of emotion, easily misunderstood
• Some problems too hard for IM
• Socializing

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Telepointer

• Telepointer
• Intentional gestural communication
• Awareness
• Mouse pointer visible to all
• Overloading
• Usefulness effected by network conditions
• Latency (delay), Jitter (variance) and Loss
• Solutions Buffers, Forward Error Correction,
  Traces

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Collaborative Toolkits
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Many Toolkits

• COAST, Collabrary, DistView, Collaborative
  Toolkit For Diverse, DreamTeam, Egret, GroupKit,
  Habanero, Jabber, JSDT, MAUI (MUG), OVAL, PREP,
  Prospero (Neuman), Prospero (Dourish), Single
  Display Groupware Toolkit, Sonexis Audio and Web
  Conferencing, Suite, TeamWave Workplace, Virtual
  Network Computing

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Selection Criteria

• Customizable architecture
• Java
• Still updated
• Usable for wide range of applications
• Small, customizable components

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Java Shared Data Toolkit

• Our choice JSDT
• Session with URL
• Client with URL
• Channel based communication
• Shared ByteArray
• Tokens

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Architecture
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Special Requirements

• VL-e
• Grid-Service
• Light-weight client
• Linking individual sessions
• Security
• First step Grid Service based IM and userlist

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Functional Overview
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Grid Services

• Global Manager
• persistent and stateful
• Inner-Session Manager
• factory and stateful
• Connection Manager
• factory, stateful, notifications

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Strengths Weaknesses

• Strengths
• Easily expandable
• Deployable on multiple resources
• Invitations possible from separate VL deployments
• Weaknesses
• Architecture too many layers?
• Global Manager?
• Notifications fast enough?

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Results
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What Has Been Implemented

• Grid Service oriented architecture
• Userlist allows
• Users to join multiple sessions
• Users to set availability
• Instant Messenger allows
• Users to communicate inside session

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What Has Not Been Implemented

• The CS does not fully support
• Authentication
• Users to invite another user to join a Session
• Users to communication outside of a Session
• Multi-user chat
• Personal userlist

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Visualizations (1)
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Visualizations (2)
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Visualizations (3)
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Integration into the VL

• VL not yet Service Based
• ? current Collaborative System optional

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Conclusion Future Work
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Conclusion

• Understanding of collaboration
• Architecture
• Easily expanded

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Future Work

• Add new features to IM and Userlist
• Add new collaborative features
• Support shared workspace
• OGSI ? WSRF

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Questions