Overview

The ANSE goal is to provide computational software to the general scientific community with the following criteria:

• Easily accessible. Web accessible with little/no download, install, and configuration.
  
• Engineering orientented. Computational information is supplied in symbollic engineering syntax.
  
• User controlled. Automated functions provide transparency to complex computer science details. All automation is OPTIONAL, where the user has complete control over every detail of simulation creation and execution.
  
• Interactive. Enhance education (at all levels) by providing feedback to user during simulation creation and execution.
  
• Interoperable. Provide services to existing distributed technology, including data archiving, data management tools, and scientific visualization.
  
• Extensible. Multi-compute engine capable, procedural and parallel. Needs only be defined by an interface to the equation based compute engine.
  
• Resource provider. Access to publicly available hardware and software resources via the Internet.

Accessibility

For the user, ANSE begins with the front end application which is a Java graphical user interface (GUI) accessible via a browser link (Figure 1). Java Web Start, provided by SUN Microsystems, Inc., is a browser plug-in that acts as the transport mechanism to get Java binary (class) files from a remote location to a user's desktop. The Java class files are cached on the local machine, hence the GUI runs locally. There are several advantages to using Java , and Java Web Start,

· Runs on various platforms
· No download, installation, or configuration of the GUI
· One time download and install of Java Web Start. Tested and supported by a major corporation with a fully supported documentation and troubleshooting website.
· As the GUI is updated by developers, updates and revisions are supplied to the user automatiically with each startup.
· GUI can be used "offline". Once the GUI is cached, an Internet connection is not required until the problem is submitted to be solved.

Figure 1. Starting ANSE from a browser link.

 

Engineering Oriented

The GUI provides a platform for entering computational simulation information in an engineering syntax. Textboxes, tables, checkboxes, and radio buttons provide the means to enter equations, boundary conditions, parametric data, and data management information (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Equation based environment.

 

User Control

One function of the ANSE GUI is to construct a database from user input. The database is, then, used as input to a compute engine specific interface (Figure 3).

Figure 3. ANSE GUI function; equations to database to text file.

The ANSE GUI is open source, and provides the user the ability to control data manipulation at every step of the process. Parsing of equations to build the database is handled by automated GUI functions that analyze each equation term and categorize components as either dependent variables, operators, or coefficients, as defined by the user. The resulting database can be altered by the user if specified equations were not parsed in an expected manner. Likewise, the text file(s) produced from the database tables is an automated function defined by the compute engine interface. Before submitting, the user may alter the text file(s) manually.

Interactive

Feedback from the pre/post-processing and the compute engine is shown in a status window, (Figure 4). Pop-up windows provide feedback on script generation and execution errors.

Figure 4. Application standard output from the a remote machine.

Extensible

ANSE is extensible in the sense that an interface can be written for any equation based computational engine since the database is not compute engine specific. For undergraduate education, the preferred compute engine is Matlab, as it is a commonly used undergraduate engineering tool. While not an actual compute engine, a toolbox of computational functions allows Matlab to work like a compute engine. For computationally intensive research level projects, a finite element, parallel compute engine called PICMSS, Parallel Interoperable Computational Mechanics Simulation System, is available on several platforms, and can be run independently.

 

Interoperable/Resource Provider

Another function of the ANSE GUI is to provide access to computational hardware and software resources available on the Internet. The GUI can be configured to run locally, or remotely, where the user specifies the input and the compute resources are supplied by the user or a vendor at some remote location. Additional computational resources, like NetSolve, can be accessed on yet another machine providing, or sharing, compute cycles (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Accesing NetSolve.

Other available tools are the Remote Text Editor, and remote scientific data visualization software, VisBench. The Remote Text Editor is an "Editor" window used to open, modify, and save text files on either the local or remote machine (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Viewing a remote data file.

Finally, a visualization tool exists, called VisBench (developed by NCSA), that can display remote scientific data from with the ANSE GUI (Figure 7). While still under development, VisBench provides the capability to view remote data without incurring the cost of data download to the local machine, or administration of a separate visualization package.

Figure 7.