A Web Services Approach for Sharing Remote Laboratory Resources
Li, Y., Esche, S. K. & Chassapis, C.
Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition IMECE'06, Chicago, Illinois, USA, November 5 - 10, 2006.
Abstract
Because of their promise of significant benefits to all stakeholders in the laboratory education process, an increasing number of shared remotely accessible student laboratory resources are being developed by many educational institutions around the world.
These resources include both remote laboratories, which are based on actual experimental devices as well as virtual laboratories, which represent software simulations of experiments.
Web services are becoming more and more popular as an efficient technology for sharing distributed applications and structured information.
In this article, we will propose a Web services based approach for the development and implementation of a scalable platform for providing a large variety of educational laboratory experiences to widely dispersed student audiences.
We will present the general methodology for locating and utilizing distributed remote laboratory resources based on this Web services oriented system architecture.
In particular, we will describe the overall system architecture, the design of the communication between the various system components and system users, the approach taken in managing the dynamic set of distributed resources in an efficient manner, the software architecture employed in searching for specific laboratory resources with certain functionalities as well as some challenges arising in the design and implementation of such a system.