DART News July 2006

DART is moving ahead at a speed of great knots – I reported to DEST that the DART project, as of mid June 2006, is about 35% complete¹.

Of course lots of attention is being paid to DART Mark II, otherwise known as ARCHER.

A Third DART Demonstrator

The Board recently approved a third DART demonstrator called ‘Digital History’. This project will look at specific data and information requirements in the Humanities and Social Sciences, particularly for large survey datasets, video and audio file handling, plus secure access to sensitive information.

The ‘Gugu Badhun Digital History’ project from James Cook (see Dianna Hardy), the ‘Western Cape Community Agreement’ project from Queensland (see Jane Hunter), plus the ‘Women on Farms’ project from Monash (see Natalie Pang) make up this demonstrator.

The other DART Demonstrators

Progress is moving ahead with the X-Ray Crystallography demonstrator, with Mathew Wyatt from JCU just about finished on the CIMA modifications, before it is fully installed at UQ and Monash. Nick McPhee and Jagan Kommineni from Monash will be joining the Climate Research demonstrator, which is currently focused on merging climate and ocean data around Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef. This promises very useful results, but requires careful collaboration, including AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Sciences) in Townsville.

DART Portal workshop

A one day workshop in Melbourne is proposed in early August (possibly August 2) to develop a DART portal design. If you would like to attend, please discuss with your Chief Investigator and then let Frank Eilert know, who is organising the workshop. An Access Grid meeting will also be held as part of the workshop, for those who want to join in but can’t attend in person.

DART Project Managers ‘tour of duty’

Jeff, Frank and Marilen spent 5 days talking to as many DART researchers as possible recently, including two days at Monash University (both Clayton and Caulfield campuses), two days at Queensland University and one day at James Cook University. In all we spoke to over 35 people, including a lunch at Monash with 24 people attending (where many people met fellow DARTers for the first time!)

The tour was invaluable, not only for the three project managers, but also to link together DART researchers, identify any problems, highlight areas of weakness and hopefully resource these areas to improve the DART project’s chances of success.

A sample of DART work package reports made to DEST

DMQ: JCU have done a complete re-write of the X-Ray Crystallography data manager model based on the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) model.
Created Kepler workflows into SRB for CIMA data.

SI: Tested Fedora-SRB module provided by the Fedora Team.
Implemented plugins for Globus replication catalogue in framework.
Installation of Storage Resource Broker (SRB), plus configuration and testing of SRB.

CR: Initial analysis of VTLS’s VALET to FEDORA interface completed.
Methodology finalised and Ethics approval obtained for user surveys.

AA: A new browser-based crystallography annotation prototype has been built, which can store annotations in a platform independent way. Wrote the publication "A Synchronous Multimedia Annotation System for Secure Collaboratories" and submitted to ACM Multimedia 2006.

DA: Cyrus spent a week at Macquarie University working with the MAMS project on security, particularly XACML and Shibboleth. Developed connectors from python to Redland (RDF) and eXist (XML) for storage and searching of metadata schema.

DART People profile

This edition we select Dianna Hardy from JCU and Malik Khan from Monash.

Dianna is working for Ian Atkinson and with Russell Sim on AA4 ‘Foster emerging wiki-based collaborative work practices in research teams’…

I am completing a Masters degree concerning searching heterogeneous and distributed maritime archaeological databases using Semantic Web technologies, under Ian’s supervision. Before joining DART, I worked with the School of Indigenous Australian Studies at JCU on the ‘Gugu Badhun Digital History’ project, which has just been added as a DART demonstrator.

I have a Bachelor of Computer Science from Western Oregon University, U.S. plus a Graduate Diploma in Archaeology from JCU. Prior to attending JCU, I worked in the U.S. as a web database programmer focusing on user interfaces.

Malik is working with Asad Khan on SI8 ‘Pilot long-distance high speed and secure data transfer between repositories’…

I have a Bachelor of Engineering degree from B.M.S College of Engineering, Bangalore University, India in 1990 and a M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in 1994. My Master’s degree was in Data Communications.

In October 1994, I joined the Research Institute at KFUPM as a Network Engineer to provide network infrastructure support, including network architecture, network hardware and core software. From 1998 I worked on several client-funded research projects, including modeling and simulation study of Enterprise Data networks of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Consolidated Electric Company (SCECO) and Saudi Telecom (STC). My most recent research project was ‘Radio wave propagation study for the Gulf region” – for the GCC Telecommunications Bureau. In addition to working as a DART researcher, I am currently working on my PhD in the School of IT at Monash University.

My research interests include data network design, high-speed computer networking, data networks and radio wave propagation modeling & simulation.

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ARCHER – what is it?

DEST have now funded the ARCHER project for $4.545 million! We can’t publicly talk about it yet, as the Minister hasn’t made the announcement, which we expect about mid July. ARCHER is to take proof-of-concept outcomes of DART and turn them into production-ready software tools, to be adapted to the 9 NCRIS high priority research capabilities (see http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews/key_issues/ncris/default.htm , plus two areas for Humanities and Social Sciences. Andrew Treloar has been invited by the DART Board of Management to lead an ARCHER working party, to fully detail the objectives of ARCHER this July. Jane Hunter and Ian Atkinson, plus a security person have also been invited to join the working party, which will report to the Board on August 4. At that time, the Board will discuss how best to proceed with ARCHER.

What is NCRIS?

NCRIS or the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy is a Federal Government program being funded $500+ million over the next 5 years to improve the infrastructure in identified research priority areas. 9 areas have been selected for priority funding this year, with 9 NCRIS Facilitators appointed to come up with a consensus investment plan for the next 5 years. For example NCRIS priority 5.3 ‘Characterisation’ covers Neutron Scattering, X-Ray Techniques (including the synchrotron), Microscopy & Microanalysis, plus Medical Imaging. It will be a difficult task to merge competing priorities and satisfy many different areas of research!

A 10^th NCRIS Facilitator (Dr Rhys Francis) has been appointed to 5.16 ‘Platforms for Collaboration’ to develop a consensus plan with respect to national networks (e.g. AARNet, GrangeNet, etc), high performance computing (e.g. APAC, VPAC, QPSF, etc) and middleware (e.g. FRODO/MERRI projects like ARROW, DART, BlueNet, APSR, etc).

I gave a presentation on ARCHER to all 10 NCRIS facilitators in Canberra on June 9. It is expected that ARCHER will setup dedicated task forces with each NCRIS priority area, to apply the DART tools to solutions for handling data and information, including customised portals, somewhat like the current DART demonstrators.

About DART people (and gossip)…

• Stephen Jeffrey (UQ) has left DART to take up a permanent job.

• Natalie Pang is joining DART at Monash University on July 10.

• Xiaofang Zhou is back from his 6 months study leave in Singapore.

• Andrew Treloar has been invited to a one-day seminar in Palo Alto, U.S. (courtesy of Microsoft). Andrew has just returned from 2 weeks in the US, speaking at JCDL 2006 and the Fedora Users Conference.

• Jane Hunter is off to the UK, while David Adamson is in Italy.

• Zubair (MU) has gone to India to get married

• Russell (JCU) still hasn’t found his ideal ‘Unix’ companion

• Frank (JCU) is recovering from his bike accident, but still blames it when he forgets!

Those WP report reminders…

The next WP progress reports are required by Friday August 11. And people with finance responsibilities also need to prepare financial commitment reports this time as well!

Jeff McDonell, DART Project Director

July 6, 2006