Systems Technology for Building a National Collaboratory

本研究由协调理论与协作技术特别倡议资助。这是那次比赛的11个获胜者之一。该项目旨在开发为科学界建立全国性信息基础设施所需的系统技术，并通过将该技术应用于研究秀丽隐杆线虫遗传结构的特定分子生物学家社区的小型合作实验室来演示该技术。目标是将社区知识收集到数字图书馆中，开发操作图书馆的技术，并学习如何促进大规模社区有效利用这项技术。这个小型合作实验室将利用国家科学基金网提供的底层通信支持来支持全国用户。研究人员解决了成功设计微型合作实验室所必需的几个研究问题。其中包括设计便于数据在广域网中快速移动的批量传输协议，发现有效的数据集群和缓存策略，为显示编辑、搜索和分组各种复杂对象提供统一的接口，以及支持可用于定位许多分布式资源的目录服务。

This research is funded under the Special Initiative on Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology. This is one of eleven winners under that competition. This project is to develop the systems technology necessary to build a nationwide information infrastructure for the scientific community and to demonstrate this technology by applying it to a mini-collaboratory for a specific community of molecular biologist that studies the genetic structure of the C. Elegans nematode. The goals are to collect the community knowledge into a digital library, develop the technology to manipulate the library, and to learn how to facilitate effective utilization of this technology for sizeable communities. This mini-collaboratory will take advantage of the underlying communication support provided by NSFNET to support users nationwide. The researchers address several research problems necessary to the successful design of the mini-collaboratory. These include designing bulk transfer protocols that facilitate the rapid movement of data across wide area networks, discovering efficient data clustering and caching strategies, providing a uniform interface for displaying editing, searching and grouping a wide range of complex objects, and supporting directory services that can be used to locate many distributed resources.