Technical Contact Points:
Gert Brettlecker ( ) and Paola Ranaldi ( )
   

Type of Software:
STABLE PROTOTYPE
  

Descriptive Keywords:
Windows, C++, Process Management, Scalability, Reliability, Replication, Service Oriented Architecture, SOAP, Web Services, Java, Axis, Tomcat
  

Potential Use and Applications:
DelosDLMS is a prototype of a next-generation Digital Library (DL) management system. Currently, it combines text and audio-visual searching, offers new information visualization and relevance feedback tools, provides novel interfaces, allows retrieved information to be annotated and processed, integrates and processes sensor data streams, and finally, from a systems engineering point of view, is easily configured and adapted while being reliable and scalable.
   

General Description:
The overall goal of the DelosDLMS is the implementation of a prototype of a next-generation digital library management system by integrating the powerful and highly sophisticated prototype systems and services which have originally been developed independently in the context of the DELOS network of excellence. The prototype is based on the OSIRIS/ISIS platform, a middleware environment developed by ETH Zürich and now being extended at the University of Basel.
  
OSIRIS is a general-purpose middleware for reliable and fault tolerant distributed processes. ISIS is a prototype application for information retrieval in multimedia collections. Both of them are fully described as separate entries in this Inventory. An online demonstration is available at http://isisdemo.cs.unibas.ch (username and password are provided upon request).
  
The DELOS DLMS is continuously extended by integrating further DL services. The services available as of February 2007 are the following, which are fully described as separate entries in this Inventory.
   
· Daffodil (University of Duisburg-Essen)
  
· MedioVis (University of Konstanz)
  
· Fast Annotation Service (University of Padua)
  
· SOM Service (University of Konstanz)
  
· Audio Features Vienna (TU Vienna)
  
· 3D Features Florence (University of Florence)
  
· Video Services (University of Florence)
  
· OntoNL Services (TU Crete)
  
· Interactive Paper (ETH Zürich)
   

Technical Description:
OSIRIS/ISIS is implemented completely in C++ based on the Windows API. At a basic level it offers a generic message oriented middleware, which allows exchange of messages and efficient execution of processes by implementing a distributed workflow execution engine. ISIS is a process-based digital library application, which is implemented as a set of services that act on top of OSIRIS. The SOAP gateway allows integrating external loosely coupled services. Using O’GRAPE (OSIRIS GRAphical Process Editor), new workflows combining existing services can easily be created.
  
Detailed information about ISIS and OSIRIS is presented in “The OSIRIS Process Support Middleware and the ISIS Process-Based Digital Library Application”
  
(http://dbis.cs.unibas.ch/delos_website/jpa2/osiris.pdf).
  

Required User Skills:
Fair knowledge of C++ and Windows programming, conceptual knowledge of message oriented middleware, SOA, and process management is recommended in order to be able to fully understand the source code and implement new tightly coupled (OSIRIS) services. For the integration of WSDL/SOAP based services (loosely coupled) into custom processes no knowledge of C++ and the OSIRIS source code is needed. For SOAP service implementation with Java and Axis, fair knowledge of Java is needed.
   

Pre-Requisites for Installation:
At least one PC with Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer and an available SQL Server database server preferable at the same machine is needed to run the OSIRIS platform. Additional, memory and disc requirements are mostly demanded by the services one wants to install. The OSIRIS core services and the middleware layer itself are not resource demanding. Additionally a current Java runtime is needed for O’Grape and services hosted by Tomcat/Axis.
   

Conditions of Use:
Contact the authors.