interactive models on the internet

[Ginger Booth]

Dear Jan Burse (and anyone else interested),

> Because putting interactive models on the internet is part of our
> research we have some questions concerning the java prototype
> of swarm:
> 
>     - Does it have client and server parts?
>     - Does it have java and non-java parts?

    Parallel to my Swarm-based Gecko stuff, I've been developing a CourseWare
system for delivering ecology lessons via the web.  (Though ecology is the
application I'm getting paid for at the moment, it's not ecology specific.)
You can see a partial funding proposal for it, which includes links to some 
demo labs:

    http://www.eeb.edu/~ginger/proposenecuse.html
    
    You need a Java-capable browser to see the labs.  Netscape 3.03+ and
Internet Explorer 3.0+ seem to work on all platforms I've tried.  Across the
Atlantic, loading the labs may be slow.  From my home, via a 33k(?) modem
line, they usually run within a minute.
    
    CourseWare is a Java framework/toolkit for building and organizing 
interactive web-served labs.  It has Java and any-other-Webbable parts at the 
moment, and I hope to extend it into the server side soon.  Basically it sees 
a lab as a collection of documents (arbitrary Web pages) explaining things, 
plus interactive parameterized graphical classes for doing simulations/plots/
whatever, plus a collection of prepared scenarios to auto-run, plus menus to 
alter the preloaded simulation parameters.  My graphical objects at the moment
are a full-custom DaisyBall (buckyball with petals :) and labeled plots,
with raw data or function feeds.  I have Java source for a cellular automata
lattice and 3-D molecule viewer that could probably be massaged in easily.

    As your questions make clear, the crux of what kind of simulation you can
web this way, is how much binary you're going to serve over a narrow bandwidth,
how demanding it is to run on the client side, and whether there exists
any division of labor such that the server can help.  What I've mostly thought
of for server assistance is with integrating programs you don't want to (or
rationally can't) translate and serve in Java.  Like taking a time series and
feeding it to Mathematica for Fourier analysis, then returning the results
(possibly graphically rendered, but maybe just raw data) to the client.  In
other words, I'm leaving Gecko on Swarm.

    Anyway.  In case you're interested.
    
Best regards,
    Ginger Booth
    Center for Computational Ecology
    Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies
    address@hidden
    http://www.eeb.yale.edu/~ginger/
    


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