PLATFORM : KASBA PROJECT

Summary of the project

The main goal of Kasba is to make it possible to any potential user to discover and interactively test services primarily corresponding to software developed within Xerox Research Labs. Once the user knows about these services, the next step consists in designing scenarios involving several services, and validating that the results correspond to what is expected. Ultimately, a scenario can become a new service.

Kasba project consists in two kinds of activities related to the notions of services implementation and integration:

• The service implementation activity includes the improvement and extension of existing services such as the profiler service, the refinement of the recommender service, the wrapping of existing services such as askOnce, Docushare and Sparrow, and the integration of new services produced by the lab. In addition, we work on the integration of information broadcasting devices (e.g. display or phone).

• The integration infrastructure and support mainly consists in the evaluation of existing solution (e.g. e-speak), the establishment of bridges with de-facto standards (UDDI), some work on a service description language, the definition of a strategy of service registration and clustering, and the definition and implementation of suitable user interfaces (from the functional point of view). An important aspect deals with the management of scenarios involving several services, with the possibility to easily and interactively create, share, edit and modify scenarios.

We want to stress that Kasba mainly relies on Java, and so services should be easily portable on any underlying platform as long as Java is supported as well as a registration/discovery mechanisms. We intend to deliver some components and transfer some expertise to IBG, in particular for the development of "modular collaborative applications".

Status

A first prototype has been developed, showing the technical feasibility and providing a subset of the required functionalities. Our approach is to incrementally improve this environment and the set of services.

If you want more information or would like to contact us, do not hesitate to send a mail to gastaldo@xrce.xerox.com.

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