Advanced Infrastructure for Pan-European Collaborative Engineering

Project Information

E-COLLEG

Grant agreement ID: IST-1999-11746

Start date 1 January 2000

End date 31 December 2003

Funded under

• Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a "User-friendly information society, 1998-2002"

Total cost € 3 796 284,00

EU contribution € 2 179 892,00

Coordinated by

THALES OPTRONIQUE SA
France

Deliverables

Advanced infrastructure for pan-European collaborative engineering: Advanced network transport service

The goal of the E-COLLEG project was to provide a new paradigm platform for distributed collaborative engineering through the definition and implementation of an advanced infrastructure for collaborative engineering. ANTS (Advanced Network Transport Service) is a peer-to-peer based infrastructure, which can be applied to seamlessly integrate tools and interconnect them as Web Services in order to overcome connectivity problems between highly protected intranets. ANTS supports relay and routing as well as different underlying transport protocols like TCP, HTTP(R) to transmit data across heterogeneous networks. The transport mechanism itself can be accessed as a Web Service using SOAP calls to the same server. This enables us to have a unified security solution for both the transport service and all other services hosted by the server. More information on the SMADA project can be found on the project’s website: http://www.ecolleg.org

Advanced infrastructure for pan-European collaborative engineering: Tool registration and management Services

The goal of the Advanced Infrastructure for Pan-European Collaborative Engineering (E-COLLEG) project was to provide a new paradigm platform for distributed collaborative engineering through the definition and implementation of an advanced infrastructure for collaborative engineering. TRMS – Tool Registration and Management Services enable distance-spanning tool integration. Once registered, tools provide their service for distributed design teams. Advanced service discovery technologies connect to the most appropriate service with respect to optimal availability within the current configuration of the virtual engineering network. Once registered, tools provide their services to distributed engineers. Advanced service discovery methods are used to connect to the most appropriate service with respect to optimal availability within the current configuration of the virtual engineering network. TRMS guarantees secure data transfer with authentication and authorisation of users, as well as it includes security management mechanisms that allow administrator to monitor users' activity and to execute a proper security policy. TRMS allows design teams to make their resources available to the others. It is thus intended for distributed engineer groups collaborating on the same project and using shared tools. TRMS enables to use tools that have been installed in geographically dispersed locations. Built-in mechanisms make tool registration very easy. Also tool invocation is straightforward. TRMS provides a user with a comfortable interface - the TRMS Client for looking for a required tool. It makes user’s work more efficient and saves his/her time. Only tools pre-registered in the system may be searched for. Registered tools are configured for integration due to automatically generated XML-based interfaces. Of course, one needs rights to use a particular tool. Management of users and their multilevel privileges is a strong asset of the system. Cryptography techniques and digital signature technology protect project data on their way through the network, as well as protect access to the system. Advanced Network Transport Service (ANTS) enable exchange of project data through existing firewall systems without reconfiguration. TRMS has its own simple workflow management systems that simplify management of tasks realised by a distributed engineering environment. More information on the SMADA project can be found on the project’s website: http://www.ecolleg.org

Exploitable results

Extensible ressource integration system

ASTAI(R) is a tool- and service-integration environment supporting distributed tool-execution on different platforms. All integrated tools and services can be combined in powerful workflows which easily adapt to the users working procedures. It offers a convenient, easy to use interface to tools, enabling a platform-spanning automation and support. Complex interaction with existing software and an adaptive workflow design provides an efficient solution for different domains, ranging from office-automation to multi-site internet-based cooperating workflow environments.