Pc Dynamics

The objective of this project is the design and implementation of an open, extensible system for providing access to existing corrosion information. This will be achieved through a network of interested data providers, users and developers. Where available, existing standards and technologies will be used, with the partners developing informatic and commercial protocols to allow users single-point access to distributed data collections. One of the major difficulties of corrosion engineering is the multi-dimensional nature of the corrosic problem. A very large number of alloys are available, and these may then be exposed to an almost infini range of environments. Thus, although many thousands of corrosion tests have been performed ar numerous papers published, it remains difficult for the individual corrosion engineer to bring together the information that is relevant to a specific situation. To some extent this problem has been tackled by centralized collections of corrosion data and abstracts. However, these are limited to published information and tend to be rather inaccessible to potential users. The latter problem relates partly to the dedicated user interfaces that are typically used with these data collections. and partly to the commercial necessities of ensuring a reasonable return for the information providers. The OCEAN thematic network aims to overcome these limitations through the development of open protoco for locating, paying for, and obtaining corrosion information. In this context cover all sources of corrosion information including large centralized data collections, individual data collections from research projects, human expertise distilled in books and expert systems, computer-assisted learning texts, multimedia resources and access to human experts. The nominated partners in the thematic network include representatives of several categories of information providers and users, with interest groups allowing additional organizations to participate in the project. It is a specific objective of the project that OCEAN will be open; open to all information providers offer information, and open to all data users to obtain information. At the same time the commercial value information will be recognized through commercial protocols, and partners in the project have particular expertise in funds transfer. The detailed specification of the OCEAN system will be the first task of the thematic network, but a candidate approach would be based on World-Wide Web technology. The core of the OCEAN system would be; intelligent directory service that holds information on all of the partners in the OCEAN network. Users would then query the directory for information on the data sources that might have relevant information and the cc of that information. The inherent simplicity of the open system proposed should ensure that the objectives of the Thematic Network can be achieved, and that the system is extensible for the future.