RE: use cases: binary XML for scientifc computing

If you are going to be looking at how this stuff fits in with grid
computing, perhaps it would be worthwhile also to make some comments
about DFDL?  I posted this suggestion previously (11/1) and nobody seems
to have picked up on it, so maybe the thought is not appropriate for
some reason, but at first glance DFDL does seem related to me.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: public-xml-binary-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-xml-binary-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Aleksander
Slominski
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 4:41 PM
To: Stephen D. Williams
Cc: Wolfgang Hoschek; xml-dev@lists.xml.org; public-xml-binary@w3.org;
Kenneth Chiu; Madhusudhan Govindaraju
Subject: use cases: binary XML for scientifc computing


Stephen D. Williams wrote: 




		what are use cases for nux: what do you plan to use it
for? 
		
		are use cases related to XML Binary Characterization
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xbc-use-cases/>
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xbc-use-cases/> ? 
		
		i am a bit disappointed that scientific requirements are
completely omitted form XBC use cases - the closest i could find is
http://www.w3.org/TR/xbc-use-cases/#FPenergy but it skips over whole
issue how to transfer array of doubles without changing endianess ... 
		


	I have proposed to the group recently that I create one or more
use cases that cover supercomputing, grid processing, and sensor
networks. 
	

great to hear this. i think we worked in all those areas -it seems XML
became very popular and now wit convergence on Grid Web Services having
efficient binary XML format that can be used between "optimized" peers
seems to be very important ...


	Your observation seems to validate that point.  I would be happy
to incorporate anything you could provide.  My company builds and
maintains Linux supercomputers and I have present and past experience
with grid-like processing, so I have some resources and contacts. 
	
	

		we did lot of work in past related to XML performance
(in Indiana University and Binghamton) and are very concerned that
whatever binary XML will be characterized/standardized in W3C will be of
no much use for scientific computing and grids ... 
		


	Could you provide links or details to any of this work?  

we worked on SOAP parsing and optimization for scientific computing:

Madhusudhan Govindaraju, Aleksander Slominski, Venkatash Choppella,
Randall Bramley, and Dennis Gannon. Requirements for and evaluation of
RMI protocols for scientific computing
<http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xgws/papers/sc00_paper/> . In
Proceedings of SC00 Conference, Dallas TX, Nov 2000. Available on CD-ROM
from IEEE
Kenneth Chiu, Madhusudhan Govindaraju, and Randall Bramley.
Investigating the limits of SOAP performance for scientific computing
<http://www.computer.org/proceedings/hpdc/1686/16860246abs.htm> . In The
11-th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed
Computing HPDC-11 2002 (HPDC'02), Jul 2002.
Madhusudhan Govindaraju, Aleksander Slominski, Kenneth Chiu, Pu Liu,
Robert van Engelen, and Michael J. Lewis. Toward Characterizing the
Performance of SOAP Toolkits
<http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/xgws/papers/soap_perf_char_grid2004.pdf>
. In 5th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Grid Computing, November
2004
Kenneth Chiu and Wei Lu. A Compiler-Based Approach to Schema-Specific
XML Parsing <http://wam.inrialpes.fr/www-workshop2004/ChiuLu.pdf> . In
First International Worksop on High Performance XML Processing(Satellite
of WWW2004), May 2004.
Kenneth Chiu. XBS: A Streaming Binary Serializer for High Performance
Computing. In Proceedings of the High Performance Computing Symposium
2004. Society for Computer Simulation International, 2004

however we never got enough forward momentum to come up with a proposal
for binary XML but still we are willing to work to get use cases
described.


	How do you think that XML, espeically a binary characterized
XML, should related to HDF5? 
	

HDF5 looks to me like a separate problem as it defines its own schema
for its own representation so that is a big task how to make HDF5 to XML
Infoset.

we are more interested in how to transfer scientific data (mostly arrays
of primitive types or simple structs with primitive types that can be
perfectly well expressed in XML Infoset but are also extremely
inefficient including dreaded IEEE float conversion to string and back)
and make it consistent with XML messaging (such as SOAP).

thanks,

alek

-- 
The best way to predict the future is to invent it - Alan Kay