Distributed Computing Services Division (DCSD) was created in July 1988, when Informatics Department was reorganized. DCSD's primary role is to provide managerial and technical support to the rest of Informatics Department and to the wider community which it serves.
Improvement in the quality of support given requires some development work. The expertise nurtured by this work has led to DCSD contributing to one research project and being called upon by many people for advice on many subjects.
The role of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) Establishments, of which Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is one of four, is defined as being to support research activities funded by SERC in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). Where necessary this support role should be supplemented by relevant in-house research and development. This definition exactly describes DCSD's services for SERC's Engineering Board community.
Since its formation in 1984, Informatics Department has been responsible for running various Programmes for SERC's Engineering Board. The Interactive Computing Facility (ICF) required mini-computers to be supplied to various engineering departments. The computers - from GEC and Prime - required support and development of their operating systems and basic engineering software. At that time - the late 1970's interconnection of such machines over long-distance telephone wires was still a rarity, particularly when different suppliers' equipment was involved.
During the early 1980's, the Department recognised that what are now called engineering workstations were likely to become the dominant type of machine in this area. Those early machines were still not able to offer a service to non-experts. Effort was therefore put into collaborating with the suppliers, first of Perqs and later of Suns, to develop a useful product for SERC's engineers. This was done under the titles of the Common Base and Single User Systems Programmes. Workstations brought much greater emphasis on local area networks.
During the same period the Department became actively involved in supporting the Alvey Programme, which was the UK's response to the Japanese Fifth Generation Project. This time the Department had two quite distinct roles. One was to help the Alvey Directorate manage parts of the Programme. The other was to provide a computing infrastructure for the whole Programme. The Alvey Directorate decided to put effort into helping GEC develop the Series 63 computer and supporting UNIX on Systime Vax computers. The community also demanded UNIX running on a mainframe computer, eventually based on Amdahl's UTS product, and started using large numbers of Sun workstations, which provided a link with the Single User Systems support activities.
DCSD's present activities have grown from these roots. It is now at the forefront of the technology which is starting to dominate all scientific computing high performance workstations with high resolution graphics screens linked by local area networks to servers, which provide common services and the interface to the worldwide community.
DCSD consists of three Groups and a Unit. In RAL terminology Units are relatively short lived entities with a well defined mission.
The Alvey Directorate became the Information Engineering Directorate (IED) within the Department of Trade and Industry and subsequently the Information Technology Division (ITD). Together with Its SERC counterpart, the Information Technology Directorate, it forms the Joint Framework tor Information Technology (JFIT). The ITD Unit consists of RAL staff who are working for the Systems Engineering part of ITD. They support the Project Officers and are responsible for selecting and organizing the work of the Monitoring Officer assigned to every project. Several members of the Department act as Monitoring Officers.
The main responsibility of MSG is for the Education and Awareness part of the Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE), which is described in a separate handout in this series. MSG organizes a varied programme of workshops, seminars, colloquia and conferences, including an annual EASE Spring Conference and Exhibition. It is also responsible for preparation and distribution of newsletters for EASE, the Transputer Initiative and the graphics community.
MSG IS also responsible for liaison with Committee secretariats, publicity material (such as these handouts), general administration of the Department and many other tasks.
TSG has three main areas of responsibility. The first is assessment of computers for different classes of uses, such as workstations, servers, super-graphics computers and UNIX-based PCs. This marks a significant change because, in the past, the Department put a lot of support into a very small number of products; now a list of approved machines is drawn up after each assessment exercise.
The second continues the Department's involvement with international standards in computer graphics. TSG is responsible for development, documentation, distribution and support of a comprehensive implementation of the current standard Graphics Kernel System. Allied with this is provision of an inhouse service for production of good quality technical documents, with growing emphasis on how to incorporate computer graphics with text.
The third responsibility is for administering the Informatics Department UNIX Service (IDUS). This consists of over a hundred computers from at least eight suppliers, though the majority are from Sun Microsystems. The machines are all interconnected by an Ethernet local area network, described in a separate handout. Recently the security of the whole system has been a centre of attention.
SSG's main role is to integrate products with the system and provide the network connections necessary for this type of working. It is involved in a wide variety of projects, but three issues are of current interest. The first is how to provide resources for all users in a way that is independent of the machine which provides them. Such resources include data, software, printers and computing power.
Development of higher speed communications raises the issue of how users can interrogate data being generated by supercomputers from workstations several hundred miles away. Engineering is just one area where this is important and SSG is actively developing the necessary facilities.
The UNIX community has been well served by widely available communications protocols. However the international standards are starting to become important. SSG is looking at ways of integrating new electronic mail facilities with our existing and heavily used systems and particularly with developing Directory Services, which make it possible to find information about a person or function no matter where that information is stored.
SSG is contributing to a collaborative research project which brings together the Department's interests in graphics and communications standards. It is also becoming involved in evaluating toolkits which make the X Windows system more usable by the average programmer.
Software comes to DCSD when it is ready to provide a robust service. The X Windows system is going through this process at the moment and is likely to be a major focus of activity in the future. It may well require significant changes to many of the Department's programs and ways of working.
Another area in which the technology is starting to become available is where people wish to exchange complex documents between very different hardware and text processing systems. It appears that the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is likely to be of considerable interest in future.
Technical Services Group (TSG) of the Distributed Computing Services Department (DCSD) has three main areas of responsibility: development and support of the Graphical Kernel System (GKS) and the integration of graphics with text; assessment of different types of hardware; administering the Informatics Department UNIX) Service (IDUS). It is one of the three groups within DCSD, whose primary role is to provide managerial and technical support to the rest of the Department and to the wider community which it serves. Further details of the work of the DCSD and IDUS can be found in separate handouts.
TSG was formed in 1988, following a reorganisation aimed at producing an organisational structure which would be appropriate for the changing role of the Department.
The three areas of responsibility described above are handled by three Sections.
The Department has had a long involvement with GKS, contributing to Standards activities and also to the development of an implementation of this International standard graphics system (called RAL GKS), in collaboration with Central Computing Department. RAL GKS is supplied to the community on a wide variety of hardware bases. As well as improvements in the facilities offered, such as the implementation of new device drivers, the Section is responsible for the maintenance of the Master copy of the source. Work is in hand to complete formal validation of this software against a standard set of test programs (supplied by the National Computing Centre) which will ensure that it conforms rigorously to the published International Standard.
Interest in text stems from the need to provide inhouse facilities for the preparation of notes and papers, and in the requirements of those within the Department who publish material outside, sometimes in book form. The facilities are based on AT&T's Documenter's Workbench (DWB) , and on the interactive editor FrameMaker. Of particular interest is the problem of integrating text and graphics in the same document, with the graphics perhaps generated by another system (GKS for example) and presented in "metafile" form.
Part of the Awareness Programme of the Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) (see separate handout for further details) involves identifying suitable hardware for the Community. Advice is given to those in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) who wish to apply for grants which involve the purchase of computing equipment. The choice is so wide that it is not easy to select the correct machine, which will be able to run the software needed to undertake the work and at the same time will not cause problems when interworking with existing equipment, such as File Servers. The Section undertakes evaluations of hardware In specific categories, under the direction of the Computing Facilities Committee Technical Advisory Group (CFTAG). The results of these evaluations are made available to the Engineering Board Committees, and also to the community. Each one takes several months to complete.
So far, the Section has undertaken two evaluations of single user workstations of a type which used to be typified by the SUN 3/60, and an assessment of workstations based on the Intel 80386 chip which also run UNIX. The first workstation evaluation was carried out in 1988, when the SUN 3/60 represented the top of the range. The rapid increase in speed of these machines necessitated a repeat of the exercise in 1989, when it was found that the top end machines were performing approximately seven times faster. The 80386 assessment concentrated on the machines which ran UNIX rather than DOS, which overlap the bottom end of the workstation range.
As well as published reports, CFTAG produces an Approved list of machines for the community. Someone submitting a grant which asks for a machine on this list can be assured that there will be no hidden problems and that the selected equipment will run the required software.
The following graph gives an indication of the relative power of workstations from a variety of different suppliers, based on particular chip sets. The number of machines in each sample is shown in the body of the diagram .
This section is responsible for the administration of the in-house IDUS service, which consists of over a hundred computers from at least eight suppliers, though the majority are from Sun Microsystems. These machines are all interconnected by an Ethernet local area network, described in a separate handout. The work involves setting up new machines, reconfiguring the system as required, managing file space and backing up the system in case of system breaks. The Section liaises with suppliers as necessary, both to fix faults and to keep track of equipment orders. A support team provides help with queries from internal and external users.
In addition, the Section is responsible for computer security of the service, and has carried out a full Risk Analysis for the system. As a result, a Department Code of Conduct exists to ensure that users are informed of their responsibilities.
The Assessment Section is currently involved in an evaluation of File Servers, and intends to investigate a new type of hardware known as an X terminal (a cheaper alternative to a workstation). Since the power of computers continues to increase rapidly, it is expected that further assessments of both workstations and servers will be undertaken within the next 15 months.
The major graphics work involves the completion of the validation tests mentioned earlier, and the merging of the current two-dimensional version of GKS with a three-dimensional version currently under development at the University of Manchester. Further graphics activities will be coordinated via the new Advisory Group on Computer Graphics (AGOCG).
Text activities will involve the introduction of systems based on the ISO Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML), which will allow a document to be typeset by a variety of different systems. In addition, graphics output in the form of a standard metafile such as Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) will be incorporated.
Administering the service is an on-going requirement. The major emphasis at present is on system performance, where there is considerable room for improvement. New tools are needed to locate the bottlenecks and remove them, thus improving the standard of service. Both hardware and software must be kept updated to provide maximum support for the rest of the Department. Finally, the security systems which have been put in place must be checked regularly to safeguard the overall system from attack.
Systems Support Group (SSG) provides support for the UNIX Systems and communications facilities used within Informatics Department. It also monitors and evaluates technical developments in these areas, particularly involving International Standards for Open Computing and makes the results available in reports and as advice to particular groups with specific problems. It is involved in a research project which is investigating the ways in which Standards for graphics and communications can be used in new kinds of applications.
SSG represents a line of work which goes back many years to well before the formation of Informatics Department. We have always been involved in making the latest computers available as quickly as possible. Traditionally the hardware has been far in advance of the software and so it has been necessary to add features to the suppliers' systems to make them more usable. Later, when it became clear that UNIX was the only common solution across many hardware platforms, there were no commercial offerings so we had to provide front line support for UNIX. This carried on into the era of Alvey (Vaxes, GEC Series 63 and UTS) and the single user systems (perqs and Suns). Fortunately, commercial products are now satisfactory and systems support has moved on to add value to the basic system.
Communications support has an equally long history. The need to establish links between the Primes and GEC 4000s of the Interactive Computing Facility led to the first phase of what is now the Joint Academic Network (JANET). During the Alvey Programme, the Alvey Mail system was the only system available to link many of the commercial partners with their academic collaborators. As workstations became prevalent, so emphasis switched to higher speed links over shorter distances and the new facilities which were made possible. Curiously enough, the rapidly improving technology of long distance communications has brought renewed involvement in connecting remote computers to large machines at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
SSG provides expertise in the maintenance and evaluation of distributed file systems such as Sun's Network File System, distributed window systems such as the X-Windows protocols and distributed computing techniques. A distributed file system allows data stored on different computers to be accessed from anywhere on the local network. A distributed window system provides a means to run applications on a number of computers and have all the results displayed and manipulated graphically on one workstation screen. Distributed computing involves an application being split into a number of separate tasks which are then run on different computers so as to make the best use of the available computing power.
Much of this work involves our own Local Area Network (LAN) but is increasingly being extended to incorporate sites connected over a Wide Area Network (WAN). High-speed networking is becoming vital as more and more researchers need to access supercomputers like the Cray X/MP at RAL from workstations at a remote site. SSG is looking at the hardware and software requirements for internetworking machines over W ANs with the aim of providing researchers with the ability to carry out interactive working on the supercomputer and having results displayed graphically on the workstation on their desk.
SSG help run and maintain a LAN based around Ethernet technology. A variety of workstations and minicomputers are connected together and communicate over an Ethernet LAN. SSG provides assistance in adding new machines to the LAN and configuring them so that they can interwork with the existing systems and interchange electronic messages and data. We also provide management of the LAN to ensure that the communication services continue to function. The LAN in turn has connections to the WAN via machines which run the X.25 protocol set. SSG provides expertise in mounting the software to provide network communications to other Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) on JANET. One facet of WAN communications is the use of electronic mail services which allow messages to be sent to sites all over the UK as well as most parts of the world via computer networks. Dissemination of information is also provided in the form of electronic bulletin boards, where requests for information can be propagated around the world, thereby reaching a global audience.
As networks become larger and more distributed, we are increasingly having to devote our attention to issues of computer security and network management. There is a need to protect sensitive data and equipment from unauthorised access. Also, we have to provide a service which is robust in the face of unexpected hardware and software failures. SSG monitors and investigates software to increase the security of computer systems and monitors potential problem areas.
Another important area is that of performance, where it is necessary to monitor all aspects of a network to ensure that the most efficient use is made of the available resources. Tools are being developed to assist a system administrator in monitoring the system and to pinpoint potential performance bottlenecks.
In order to allow machines from different manufacturers to interwork with each other, it is vital that they conform to international standards where these have been developed. The concept of Open Systems is one strongly supported by SSG and to this end we have been investigating and developing a service based on existing or emerging standards. Examples include Directory Services where we are investigating implementations of the emerging X.500 pilot project to provide an international directory service. This is part of a Joint Network Team funded initiative to link all UK Universities together in this way.
SSG are also involved in a number of special projects. For instance, it carries out evaluations of bridges and routers so as to provide the community with advice on which hardware should be purchased. There is also an ESPRIT project (ARGOS I) which is carrying out research into the development of standards for carrying graphical data over international networks. This work is carried out in collaboration with a number of international partners.
In the future, SSG will pursue a number of new work areas. These include investigation of the X400 standard for electronic mail systems which will allow users to send mail messages in a form which can be understood by all computers. We will provide access to UNICOS the new operating system on the Cray so that researchers can distribute the computing load of their programs between the local workstations and the supercomputer. This is difficult enough in specialised parallel processing engines, but is much more difficult over a heterogeneous and variable group of computers. In a similar vein, the Group intends to extend the availability of high-speed networking to a number of new sites and help upgrade the existing facilities.
It is clear that the X-Windows System is going to dominate the near future and an expansion of the X-Windows service is therefore also planned so that graphical applications can be distributed across the network to where there is spare computing power and so that the best use can be made of powerful workstations. We shall also be setting up dump and archive servers to support the Informatics Department's users and provide improved dial-in modem services so that staff can access these facilities from their homes as well as from their offices.
The Management Services Group (MSG) of the Distributed Computing Services Division (DCSD) has four main areas of responsibility: running the Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) Education and Awareness Programme; Publicity and Liaison with the Community and Subject Committees; Technical Support to the whole of Informatics Department, and the provision of the General Administration Service.
The four areas of responsibility mentioned above are handled by four different sections, but with a large measure of cross-activity between them.
This forms the most significant aspect of the whole EASE Programme. Following recommendations, requests and personal contact by the Education Coordinator this section is responsible for the organisation of seminars, tutorials, workshops and the annual EASE Conference and Exhibition. These events cover the whole range of subjects of interest to the Engineering research community on IT matters, and are arranged at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and at other institutions where this is considered appropriate. Attendance at these events is free and participants are generally only responsible for covering the cost of their travel and accommodation.
The Engineering Computing Newsletter is the main means of communication between the EASE Management and the Community. Published at monthly intervals it contains items of importance about the EASE Programme and articles by the Research Community on their work and interests. Currently in excess of 5000 copies are distributed monthly to past and existing grant holders and efforts are made to ensure that copies are available to a wider audience via distribution through notice boards, coffee lounges, common rooms etc.
Liaison with the Community is also maintained by having a nominated representative at every Higher Education Institute (HEI) nationwide. This role is considered significant in that it allows direct communication between the Institute and the Informatics Department at RAL.
MSG is orchestrating a series of visits to every REI which has had or hopes to have a Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) grant. Presentations are given at an open meeting and then the three visitors conduct about ten structured interviews which are recorded on a questionnaire. An attempt is made to sample a full range of responsibilities and use of Information Technology (IT) in each Department. These visits will be repeated regularly in the future.
To complete the liaison activities, regular contact is maintained with the Subject Committee Secretariats at Swindon Office so that they maintain up-to-date information on the EASE Programme.
This section covers a range of tasks undertaken on behalf of the whole Department. These include extensive database facilities covering mailing lists, maintenance contracts, equipment distribution etc. Without these facilities much of our contact with the Community would be impossible.
The Departmental Administration Officer performs an essential role for the whole Department and is a member of the Group. All tasks from the control of finance, allocation of office space to organisation of all the Department's contracts fall within this section's responsibility. Without efficiency here, the whole Department would fail to operate effectively.
EASE is still in its infancy, the public image will be dependent upon how effective the projection of this is by the Group. The analysis of the information gathered by the current round of visits to the HEI's will have a significant bearing on the future direction of the Programme. Interaction with the Community is extremely important and it is the Group's responsibility to ensure that the views of the Community are heard and acted upon.
Informatics Department has around one hundred staff, everyone of whom uses at least one computer. There is therefore a clear need to provide a computing service for these users. It also provides an opportunity to practice what we preach to others - to use approved, standard hardware and software to meet the needs of a wide range of users. The experience gained from running and optimising such a service is made available to the community supported by the Department.
The Informatics Department Unix Service (IDUS) is provided by Distributed Computing Services Division (DCSD) from contributions levied on all other projects pro rata to the number of staff working on each project. Representatives of the other Divisions advise IDUS management on what is required through various meetings; its budget is authorised and overseen by the Informatics Division Heads Meeting.
Modern electronic computing started with a single machine programmed and operated by the people who built it, because they were the only people who understood it. Later teams of operators were employed to run the machine, load jobs prepared by the programmers and (sometimes) send the output back to the programmer. Programmers then received terminals first Teletypes, later Visual Display Units - at which they could prepare jobs and look at their output. It then became possible to interact with the program whilst it was running - looking at intermediate results and choosing alternative actions.
As the hardware became cheaper, more compact and more reliable it became possible to put more functions into the terminal. Eventually it was possible for each user to have a computer on his own desk - low price, low performance systems were called Personal Computers (PCs) and higher performance systems became workstations. The terminology has recently become confused as PC makers have worked hard to produce more powerful systems and workstation vendors have introduced low cost entry-level systems. Bill Joy, of Sun Microsystems, has recently defined a workstation as "a computer that doesn't get any quicker at night" i.e. when all the other users have gone home.
There remained the problem that it was not cost effective to give every user all the resources that he or she might at some time need. The concept emerged of workstations providing those features which users needed all the time, linked to "servers" which provided resources which were available when needed, but could profitably be shared by many users. This is the situation represented by IDUS today. The trick is to make it seem to the user that he really has everything he wants, when he wants it, right in his office.
The other major problem is to try to convince the user that computers from many different suppliers are essentially the same, whilst still offering the specialised facilities for which they were purchased. The Unix operating system is the only viable solution to this problem - though there are still too many differences between the different offerings backed up by other software adhering to national or international standards. One of the tasks of IDUS and Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) (see separate handout) is to provide the same level of uniformity between applications programs across the broad field of engineering.
The key to IDUS is the communications network which links machines in the Department to other facilities both inside Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and spread around the world. This is shown schematically in the following diagram.
The diagram shows, from top to bottom, some of the other important networks, the IDUS systems and an indication of the connections within RAL itself. The term "village" refers to another Department in RAL, the Linotron is a high quality phototypesetter and PROFS is the office system used at RAL. The number of servers and workstations shown in the diagram is purely illustrative - there are close to a hundred in all.
Specialised support is provided to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in two areas. First, to organise and operate a monitoring programme for projects in Information Engineering - the projects are monitored for quality of the results or products of the research and for performance of the participants as teams. Secondly, to assist in the management of specific technical areas. The part of DTI responsible for this work is now the Information Technology Division (ITD) formerly the Information Engineering Directorate (IED) and before that the Alvey Directorate. Support from RAL comes from the ITD Unit.
The Information Engineering Advanced Technology Programme (IEATP), carried out under the Science and Engineering Research Council/DTI Joint Framework for Information Technology (JFIT), is a £40M research programme in advanced information engineering involving academic and industrial partners. Most of this research is carried out in collaborative projects with multiple industrial and academic partners. The support provided by the Unit concentrates on the Systems Engineering projects in the IE programme. This is primarily because of the large number of projects involved and the diversity of those projects. About seventy collaborative projects must be monitored.
The management assistance work concentrates on the External Interfaces and Special Systems part of the JFIT programme together with a carry-over of the remaining projects in the Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems and Systems Architectures part of the Alvey Programme. Specifically, support is given in the preparation of proposals and requests for contract actions in the Systems Engineering programme and in managing necessary extensions of projects in the Alvey programme.
The support covers all stages in the monitoring programme and is based largely on experience gained in initiating and operating a monitoring programme for the earlier Alvey programme in Software Engineering. The success of that monitoring programme lead to its extension to other areas in the Alvey programme and then to its adoption in the current programme.
Despite the advanced and diverse nature of IT research in the area of Systems Engineering, which covers most topics in IT research not involving hardware development, common monitoring procedures have been established. A notable achievement of the ITD Unit has been the introduction of a new procedure for monitoring which allows real monitoring costs per project to be reduced substantially from those in the earlier Alvey case. This possibility arose from the observation that in the Alvey programme, with high quality monitoring, most projects progressed satisfactorily to completion and it was realised that the frequency of monitor visits to the projects could have been set at a lower level. In the current IEATP programme this lower frequency of monitoring is adopted but provision is made for increasing the level of monitoring for those few projects that might subsequently develop problems.
The ITD Unit covers all stages in the monitoring programme. The monitoring process starts by identifying appropriate experts in the various topics found in the research programme. These potential monitoring officers (MO) must combine valuable experience in several areas. They must be able communicators, have experience in the principles and practice of project management, and have a knowledge of the theory and technology of one or more specialist subjects in Information Technology. Typically, whether from academic, commercial or industrial bases, such people are in short supply and the ITD Unit keeps a registry of possible monitoring officers.
From knowledge of the research topics of individual projects appropriate monitoring officers are identified from this registry. For each project it must then be determined that the suggested monitoring officer is acceptable to both the project team and lTD. Once appointed, the MOs are formally discharging responsibilities placed upon them by the Secretary of State and much reliance is placed upon them for correctly reporting the health of each project. An important function of the ITD Unit is to establish the correct initial level of monitoring based on the perceived level of risk and size of each project. Moreover, this function continues into each project, based on the MO reports, to ensure that the level of monitoring remains appropriate even for projects that develop problems. The ITD Unit also organises in-house training for the MOs to ensure that their monitoring of projects conforms to the required high standards.
In the field, the MOs visit their projects when appropriate and have access to all relevant information on financial, management and technical matters. Much of this information is of a confidential nature. The MO acts as the clearing-house for the information needed by the ITD Unit to manage the research programme. Following each visit the MO prepares a confidential report which specifically includes any urgent exceptions or points that should be brought to the attention of the ITD Unit. The ITD Unit monitors these reports to ensure that urgent exceptions are picked up and examined by the ITD. If appropriate, information can be passed back to the project teams through the MOs.
Recent independent evaluations of the monitoring activity mounted in the Alvey programme have concluded that monitoring was beneficial in the majority of projects, was vital to success in some cases and was probably unnecessary in one or two cases of exceptionally well managed project. By refining the monitoring activity and applying it to the current national research programme in IT the ITD Unit is playing a significant role in ensuring the success of the IT programme.
