| dc.description.abstract | Visualization is widely used in science, medicine and engineering. It can convey insight into phenomena that are well-understood, or display new data in order to uncover novel patterns of meaning. Visualization is a powerful tool in presentations (lectures, seminars, papers etc) and in discussions between colleagues. As such, it is an essentially collaborative activity. In this area, there is also a growth in the use of video conferencing to facilitate meetings between participants in geographically separate locations. This includes both specialized facilities (video conference rooms including Access Grid) and desktop video conferencing using the Internet and multicast communications. Distributed visualization addresses a number of resource allocation problems, including the location of processing close to data for the minimisation of data traffic. The advent of the Grid Computing paradigm and the link to Web Services provides fresh challenges and opportunities for distributed visualization - including the close coupling of simulations and visualizations in a steering environment. Distributed collaborative visualization aims to enhance the video conferencing environment (usually on the desktop) with access to visualization facilities. At the most basic level, pre-generated visualizations may be shared through a shared whiteboard tool. Richer approaches enable users to share control of the visualization method and its parameters. In one approach, a single visualization application is shared amongst a group of users; in another approach, the visualization dataflow paradigm is extended in order to allow sharing of visualization data between collaborators. Component middleware provides a framework for describing and assembling distributed collaborative visualization applications. The AccessGrid allows group-group collaboration, rather than just person-person, and generally offers a rich environment for collaboration - we look at ways of integrating current visualization systems into this new type of environment. XML has made a significant impact in many areas of computing, from e-business to mathematics. It is being increasingly used as the middle tier of client-server interfaces where its power and flexibility makes it ideal for middleware (for example, SOAP and related Web Services developments in W3C). Current developments in Grid middleware are based on an enhancement to Web Services (the Open Grid Services Architecture - OGSA). This STAR reviews the state of the art in these areas, draws out common threads in these diverse approaches and looks at strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for further development in this field. | en_US |
