Moving the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability to a Distributed, Portable Architecture
The Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC) has been re-engineered from a Windows application with tight binding between computation and a graphical user interface (GUI) to a new distributed object architecture. The key goals of this new architecture are platform portability, extensibility, deployment flexibility, client-server operations, easy integration with other systems, and support for a new map-based GUI. Selection of Java as the development and runtime environment is the major factor in achieving each of the goals, platform portability in particular. Portability is further enforced by allowing only Java components in the client. Extensibility is achieved via Java's dynamic binding and class loading capabilities and a design by interface approach. HPAC supports deployment on a standalone host, as a heavy client in client-server mode with data stored on the client but calculations performed on the server host, and as a thin client with data and calculations on the server host. The principle architectural element supporting deployment flexibility is the use of Universal Resource Locators (URLs) for all file references. Java WebStart{trademark} is used for thin client deployment. Although there were many choices for the object distribution mechanism, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) was chosen to support HPAC client server operation. HPAC complies with version 2.0 of the CORBA standard and does not assume support for pass-by-value method arguments. Execution in standalone mode is expedited by having most server objects run in the same process as client objects, thereby bypassing CORBA object transport. HPAC provides four levels for access by other tools and systems, starting with a Windows library providing transport and dispersion (T&D) calculations and output generation, detailed and more abstract sets of CORBA services, and reusable Java components.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 814542
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2002/145; TRN: US200317%%284
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 5 Sep 2002
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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