iFUSE: a development environment for composable easy-to-assemble information transforms
Robert A. Joyce, Jennifer P. Cormier · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2007
A crucial component of a net-centric information management system is a set of simple programs or scripts - fuselets - that effect small transformations on available data. Individual fuselets can perform tasks such as filtering, aggregation, monitoring, format conversion, and simple image manipulation. The global effect of a collection of cooperating fuselets is to add value to the system: to transform data into knowledge. Fuselets are also adept at bridging heterogeneous systems, providing consumers the data they need in the format they require - not necessarily the format that was convenient for the original data producer. ATC-NY has created an extensible fuselet development environment, iFUSE, that provides the support fuselet developers need in order to create and discover fuselets, avoid design and efficiency pitfalls, and ensure the appropriate factorization of fuselet code. For the individual fuselet, iFUSE lets the user focus on the information being transformed, not the code needed to implement the transformation. iFUSE also helps the designer understand the environment in which the fuselet operates, automatically detecting potential data flow problems and providing visualization tools such as "fuselet slicing," which allows fuselet authors and infosphere maintainers to assess the effects of additions and changes in context.