HDF Java Products

Development Plan

r15 September 1997

Mission

The HDF Java Team has the following general goals:

  1. Add value to HDF by implmenting Java based tools and frameworks
  2. Replace and improve upon NCSA Collage and other older tools with new Java tools
  3. Investigate the use of Java for Scientific and Engineering Computation

The HDF Java products currently include:

These products will be improved and extended, and additional products created, to provide the following types of features:

  1. Support for collaboration using the NCSA Habanero environment
  2. Improved visualization and analysis features
  3. Access to remote files
  4. Support for output in various formats
  5. Improved engineering:
  6. Support for ingest, editing

New products may be added, for instance, a new stand alone utility may be created provide``dumper'' capabilities, and/or to generate images in different formats.

Development Goals

The main development targets for the next three months are:

  1. Support for collaboration using the NCSA Habanero environment [link]
    1. Support JDK 1.02 final version
    2. Port to Habanero 1.1 environment
    3. Investigate Habanero Multicast support
  2. Improved visualization and analysis features
    1. Support for large images (i.e., too large for memory)
    2. image overlay, animation, and tiling from multiple image sources (i.e., from a multi-dimensional dataset, from a series of images in a single file, and images from multiple files)
    3. Plot features--many possible features
    4. histograms of values
    5. annotation of images
    6. Investigate animation for arrays with more than 3 dimensions
  3. Access to remote files
    1. Standard classed to access HDF files locally or remotely
    2. Experiment with candidate technologies, e.g.,
      1. servlets
      2. RMI
      3. Java Beans
      4. Java/CORBA
      5. etc.
  4. Support for output in various formats
    1. print
    2. output selected data as HDF, ASCII, tab delimited table
    3. conversion to popular image formats
  5. Improved engineering:
    1. Fix bugs (as needed)
    2. Support and test on more platforms
    3. Complete test suite
      1. Investigate Java testing tools
      2. Create standard Java testing methodology
    4. Modularize design
      1. Investigate integration with Horizon efforts
    5. Incorporate new Java technology as available, e.g.,
      1. Java Foundation Classes
      2. Java graphics support
      3. publicly available standard applets
  6. Support for ingest, editing
    1. edit metadata
    2. edit and add annotations
    3. construct and editing HDF files from data sources

Development Plan (9/1/97 - 12/31/97)

Resources

Staff: For the next four month period, the HDF Java Team has 2 full time programmers, 1 RA, and .5-time manager. After that, the Java team will lose at least one full time programmer.

Budget: I assume that we have sufficient equipment and supply money to purchase one workstation and a significant amount of software.

Release Schedule

For planning purposes, the following dates are posted. What will be produced by the dates is yet to be determined.

  1. HDF library release - (unknown date ?) November --
    1. will release Java products as part of HDF 4.1r3
    2. will decide what to release when date is known
      1. Support for large images will probably be completed
      2. First Habanero version might be available
  2. Release HDF Java V2.1 -- 15 December
    1. the last release of Xinjian's stuff, if the HDF library release wasn't complete
    2. must support Habanero 1.1 by that time
    3. will include whatever else we have ready to go
    4. want to have automatic test suite implemented
    5. Note: V2.1 Code Freeze: 1 December
  3. Release JHV Java V2.2 -- Spring 98
    1. Implement furhter new JHV features based on work plan TBD
    2. Implement ingest tool, based on work plan TBD

Current Tasks

1 September - 1 December