資源導向計算及虛擬工作環境的設計與實作

Abstract

部落格以及維基百科等熱門網路應用程式的興起，意味著網際網路的發展趨勢正朝向一個大型的合作環境進行。在這個合作環境當中，使用者可以更輕易的同時扮演資訊提供者以及資訊使用者的角色。在可見的未來，當使用者可以在這環境中輕易的製作及分享更多樣的資源，從簡單的網頁到更複雜的軟體元件時，網際網路將成為一個能力更強的虛擬工作環境，能滿足更多不同背景的使用者的需求。然而，要實現這樣的虛擬工作環境，不僅僅要有健全的基礎架構來支援軟體元件的開發、佈署以及組合，同時還須提供讓一般使用者都可以接受的元件開發輔助技術。我們提出一個以資源為導向的架構來面對這些挑戰。在這個架構中，我們藉由使用者可定義的XML語法來描述各種不同的資源，而根據這些描述，相對應的動態服務可以在執行時期產生並加以管理。因此，在我們的虛擬工作環境中，不論是靜態的或是動態的服務組合，都可以透過連結這些不同資源的描述來達成。我們可以根據不同的問題領域，來建立適合的資源描述語法以及其對應的解譯與處理方法，來建造不同的網際網路應用程式。我們將會透過建立一個e-Science工作平台，來解釋如何運用我們所提出的方法幫助使用者更有彈性地使用分散各地的異質資源。

The popularity of many emerging user-centric Web applications such as blogs and Wikipedia indicates the trend that the Internet is transforming into a global collaborative environment where most people can participate and contribute in ways not perceived before. It is foreseeable that when on-line resources created by and shared among people are not just simple Web contents but also more complex software artifacts, a more accommodating, universal, and virtual workspace may be formed that support people with much more diverse background and needs. To realize such goal, however, it requires not only comprehensive infrastructure support for the development, deployment, and assembly of diverse resources but also effective strategies and mechanisms that can handle the implied complexity. We propose a metaphoric, service-oriented architecture in which arbitrary resources are associated with syntactical descriptors, called metaphors, based on which run-time services can be instantiated and managed. Characterized as a universal development environment, our architecture permits static and dynamic service composition through syntactic metaphor composition. By defining metaphors for specific problem domains and by implementing suitable interpreters, either at a global scale or on a community basis, our architecture is intended to serve as the infrastructure holding multiple applications with substantial reuse. We demonstrate our idea by building a Web-based e-Science workbench, which allows user to utilize distributed computing and storage resources in a flexible manner.