Middleware and Web Services for the Collaborative Information Portal of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Mission

Abstract

Abstract. We describe the design and deployment of the middleware for the Collaborative Information Portal (CIP), a mission critical J2EE application developed for NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rover mission. CIP enabled mission personnel to access data and images sent back from Mars, staff and event schedules, broadcast messages and clocks displaying various Earth and Mars time zones. We developed the CIP middleware in less than two years time using cutting-edge technologies, including EJBs, servlets, JDBC, JNDI and JMS. The middleware was designed and implemented as a collection of independent, hot-deployable web services, providing secure access to back end file systems and databases. This service-oriented approach to developing an integrated system is an example of cutting edge middleware design. Throughout the middleware we enabled crosscutting capabilities such as runtime service configuration, security, logging and remote monitoring. This paper presents our approach to mitigating the challenges we faced, concluding with a short review of the lessons we learned from this project and noting some of the things we would do differently and why.

A Private Cloud-Based Architecture for the Brazilian Weather and Climate Virtual Observatory

“…The concept of Virtual Observatories is also being used in other science fields, such as Earth Sciences [3], Solar-terrestrial Physics [4], Environmental Sciences [5] and even Computer Science and IT itself [6]. Virtual Observatories are a natural extension of the paradigm of centralized middleware proposed to allow access to data and tool for specific domains [7,8], but allowing the inclusion of external data and tools, therefore increasing their usage and possibilities. Figure 1 illustrates the outline of a Virtual Observatory.…”