The Unpredictable Certainty White Papers (1997) / Chapter Skim
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The National Information Infrastructure: A High Performance Computing and Communications Perspective
The National Information Infrastructure: A High Performance Computing and Communications Perspective
Pages 315-334
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From page 315... ...
These sectors of information technology application have been called national challenge (NC) applications.
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From page 316... ...
, ranging in scale up to national challenge applications. A key point is that NI!
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From page 317... ...
But the catalyzing role of government is nonetheless essential to bring the Nit to realization. The government has an enormous stake in He NIT as a consequence of its stake In the national challenge applications.
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From page 318... ...
Common architectural elements help both developers and users decouple design decisions. Of course, inappropriate standards can inhibit innovation or predispose the market to particular technological approaches.
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From page 319... ...
But commitment to common architectural elements must also include commitment to a process for evolving them. Achieving the right balance is a principal challenge to creating an adoptable national information infrastructure.
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From page 320... ...
These efforts will contribute to the development and evolution of applications software built on the substrate of NIl services. THREE-LAYER NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECTURE within the HPCC community, a much~iscussed conceptual architecture for the National Formation Megastructure has Free major interconnected layers: National Challenge Applications, supported by diverse and interdependent NI!
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From page 321... ...
Each layer supports a wide range of uses beyond those identified for the specific national challenge applications. For example, generalized Nit service and bitway technologies can also support applications on a very small scale, extensions of existing services, ad hoc distributed computing, and so on.
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From page 322... ...
There are two additional applications that sit at the interface of the national challenges and the underlying service layer: digital libraries and electronic commerce. In a sense, these are fundamental enablers for information access and electronic exchange of value and wall be extensively used by virtually all of the other NC applications described above.
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From page 323... ...
S~m~larly, relational and object-oriented database management systems provide extensive capabilities for structured data storage, indexing, and Inanagement. Diverse sets of software tools and subsystems can be integrated into coherent applications development environments to form the development base with which to assemble He national challenge applications.
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From page 324... ...
In particular, in return for complete ownership or control of a solution, they may give up the opportunity to ride the curves of growth in rapidly growing underlying technologies, such as multimedia, digital libranes, and data communication. The challenge ofthe national challenge applications is how the applications constituencies can have both control of applications solutions and participation in the rapid evolution of underlying technologies.
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From page 325... ...
With the right approach to standards and infrastructural subsystems, diverse underlying technologies can evolve into common, shareable, and reusable services that can be leveraged across multiple NC applications. Alternative Implementations of a frequently used service, such as display window management, eventually wait lead to the identification of best practices that can be embodied In a common services layer for example, for human Interfaces.
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From page 326... ...
In Figure 2(a) , Me lack of a common services infrastructure leads to stovepipe implementations, with little commonality among the service capabilities of the various national challenges.
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A common services layer coupled to toolkits for building applications. FIGURE 2 Technical challenges in building a national information infrastructure.
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From page 328... ...
to demonstrate prototype solutions to selected national challenge applications using the full potential of the rapidly evolving high performance communications and information processing capabilities. The details of the programs evolving goals and research plans are in its annual reports to Congress (FCCSET, 1994, CIC, 1994~.
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From page 329... ...
Services provide a universally available, network-aware, adaptive interface on which to construct the national challenge applications, spanning communications-based services at the low end, to intelligent information processing services at the high end. These services include network support for ubiquitous access, resource discovery in a
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From page 330... ...
The national challenges have already been summarized In a prior section. Information Infrastructure Services Services provide the underlying building blocks upon which We national challenge applications can be constructed.
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From page 331... ...
System Development and Support Environments These provide the network-based software development tools and environments needed to build the advanced user interfaces and the information-intensive NC applications.
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with memory. Intelligent Interfaces Advanced user interfaces w'll bridge the gap between human users and We emerging national information inDastn~cture.
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The IlTA focus is creating shared virtual environments which can be accessed and manipulated by many users at a distance in support of national challenge application areas. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Much of He discussion of the national information infiastructure has been at the applications level or the level of the bitways.
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From page 334... ...
1994. High Performance Computing and Communications: Technologyfor the National Information Infrastructure, Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1995 Budget.
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