Scientific Computing via the World Wide Web: The Net//ELLPACK PSE Server
Shahani Markus, Sanjiva Weerawarana, Elias N. Houstis, John R. Rice · Purdue e-Pubs (Purdue University System) · 1997
The World Wide Web is now lhe de/acto environment for providing (electronic) informalion 10 the worldwide user community.With the availability of programming languages like Java, Web browsers now can handle documents with programs embedded in them.This new functionality presents opportunities for scientific computing on the World Wide Web while its realization requires addressing several new research issues including user inteiface alld prorocol design, legacy software encapsulation, security, software delivery in directly usable form, alld networked compll1ationo{ servers.In this paper we address these issues in the context ofPDE (panial Differential Equation) network computing supported by the well known problem solving environment (PSE) IIELLPACK and its networked, Web accessible, counterpart which is referred throughout as the Net /IELLPACK PSE.Using Net IIELLPACK one can solve complex PDE problems using any Web browser thal supports Java applets.The design of Net IIELLPACK includes a Java applet that serves as the graphical user interface, a stateful text-based protocol, and Net IIELL-PACK server(s) running on some machine(s) anywhere on the network.In addition to its native protocol, the Net IIELLPACK servers also support the Web HyperText Transfer Protocol (HITP).This approach allows the reuse of existing public domain or proprietary applets to visualize or post-process the computation results.We present and justify the overall design of the system and present some data on solving a partial differential equation problem via the Web to illustrate the effectiveness of the Net IIELLPACK architecture. I "