Using services and service compositions to enable the distributed execution of legacy simulation applications

Abstract

In the field of natural and engineering science, computer simulations play an increasingly important role to explain or predict phenomena of the real world. Although the software landscape is crucial to support scientists in their every day work, we recognized during our work with scientific institutes that many simulation programs can be considered legacy monolithic applications. They are developed without adhering to known software engineering guidelines, lack an acceptable software ergonomics, run sequentially on single workstations and require tedious manual tasks. We are convinced that SOA concepts and the service composition technology can help to improve this situation. In this paper we report on the results of our work on the service- and service composition-based re-engineering of a legacy scientific application for the simulation of the ageing process in copper-alloyed. The underlying general concept for a distributed, service-based simulation infrastructure is also applicable to other scenarios. Core of the infrastructure is a resource manager that steers server work load and handles simulation data. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.