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The WBCSim PSE

© Adam Hughes

Discussing issues in scientific computing often leads one into the realm of esoterica and abstractions that can sometimes blur true meanings. Every once in awhile, however, a development comes along that helps to bring crystal clarity to a subject as the embodiment of an important concept. Such is the case with Problem Solving Environments (PSE's), and we are fortunate to have the example of WBCSim to light our path to understanding.

WBCSim is a product of scientists at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA, designed to aid wood researchers in their computational studies of wood-based composite materials. While we may not all be interested in these types of composites, it doesn't take a wood scientist to appreciate the technology involved in this particular PSE. Indeed, the researchers involved set out to not only improve their own productivity, but also to provide a prototype PSE that may be understood, copied, and expanded upon by scientists with diverse interests. It seems that they have succeeded in their quest.

The WBCSim PSE illustrates many of the features of PSE's that have been discussed in this space in the past. The architecture of this PSE is based on the classic three-tier approach to PSE design. In particular, WBCSim consists of a back tier, which does the down-and-dirty work of the simulation; the front tier, which is basically a user interface; and the middle tier, or middleware, that brokers requests from the user to the simulation software, and the simulation results in the opposite direction. The WBCSim project designates these as the developer, client, and server layers, respectively.

The developer layer, of backend, contains the workhorse programs in this PSE, those which perform the calculations. The software used in this layer includes codes for Rotary Dryer Simulation (RDS), Radio-Frequency Pressing (RFP), and Composite Materials Analysis (CMA), all important methods in the wood-composite area. These legacy codes are written in f77 and wrapped in customized Perl scripts. These scripts which interact with the server layer and reformat program output to produce a HTML pages to be displayed on the client side.

The client layer, or front end, represents the graphical user interface (GUI), with which the researcher interacts when conducting simulations. The GUI consists of several Java applets which allows the user to control which parameters are used in a calculations. Additionally, this layer contains viewers for displaying the output of visualization tools which are part of the developer layer.

As with any PSE, the middleware of WBCSim is what holds it all together. In this case, the server layer consists

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