undersea cyberinfrastructure

Some interesting Canadian science sensor workflow achievements, albeit with a typically complex IBM solution

In September 2005, [VENUS] Data Management Archive System (DMAS) was awarded a grant from the CANARIE Intelligent Infrastructure Program (CIIP) for a project called: “Toward a Service Oriented Architecture and Workflow Management for VENUS and NEPTUNE”. The goals of this project were to provide these two high profile Canadian Cabled Ocean Observatories with an integrated scientific instruments management system, the capability to deliver event information to users, as well as integrated access to distributed compute and data resources through the use of innovative technologies.

The initial draft of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) was proposed by IBM Canada, one of the largest R&D investors in Canada. This architecture was later refined by the DMAS team. It is worth mentioning that this is also the approach taken by Alcatel for the interaction with the NEPTUNE backbone.

This style of information systems architecture enables the NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS DMAS to be built by combining loosely coupled and interoperable services. The IBM Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with its underlying message system WebSphere MQ provides the features such as point-to-point data delivery and message publish-and subscribe to implement the DMAS SOA.

Bill St. Arnaud - Cyber-infrastructure for undersea instruments and networks - in CAnet News - February 20, 2007