Status of PhysNet and SINN

Michael Hohlfeld

Thomas Severiens

SINN01 - First International Technical Workshopof the project

SINN - Search-Engine-Network in the International Naturalscience Network

Overview

• PhysNet services

• Some statistics

• The PhysNet-Team

• Mirrors of PhysNet

• distributed systems

• techniques, initiatives and requirements

• Project SINN

PhysDep

• lists of links to physics departments, institutions and societies world wide

• Harvest based search engine

• 2350 links in 90 countries

PhysDoc

• lists of links to documents sources of distributed physics institutions

• 1400 links in 41 countries

• complemented by a special search engine– Quick-Search without ranking (40.000 documents)

– Search across PhysDoc and MPRESS (with ranking) (together nearly 100.000 documents)

– Search in parts of PhysDoc, arXiv and IoPP (together 140.000 documents - 1.000 from PhysDoc)

Other Services of PhysNet

• Journals– lists of links to related refereed journals which are freely

available on the web (53 Links)– list of link to “EPS Recognized Journals” (60 Links)

• Conferences– collection of related web servers (no own calendar)

• PhysJobs– list of links to various related job sites (60 Links)– Harvest based search engine

Other Services of PhysNet

• Education– online educational resources for physics (177 links)

• Links to other resources– further sources of physics information

– information services of other learned fields – nearly 50 links

• Services– tools concerning metadata (e.g. MyMetaMaker to enrich

documents with Dublin-Core MetaData)

Usage of PhysNet

• approx. 800 requests per day

The PhysNet-Team

• PhysNet is under the auspices of the European Physical Society (EPS) and several national societies

– The Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) – Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG) – National Committee for Physics of the Royal Irish Academy – Irish branch of the Institute of Physics – Société Française de Physique

The PhysNet-Team

• Regional Subsystems maintained under their own responsibility:

– India: Sutapa Ranjan (Institute for Plasma Research, Gujarat, India)

– Hungary: Kati Szalay (KFKI, Hungary)

– Poland: Zygmunt Ajduk (Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw)

– Ireland: Sara McMurry (Trinity College Dublin, Department of Physics)

– Denmark: Ole H. Nielsen (Center for atomic-scale materials physics)

– Australia, New-Zealand and Oceania: Pal Fekete (Australia)

– France: Ahmed Mahboub (EDP Sciences)

The PhysNet-Charter

• EPS has set up a Charter to open PhysNet

– for national and international physical societies and organisations

– for physics institutions and departments

– for individual scientists

– service providers

• Principles, organization and structure of PhysNet

Signed the PhysNet-Charter

– Institute for Plasma Research, India– Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Research (KFKI), Hungary– Trinity College Dublin, Department of Physics, Ireland – Swedish Institute of Space Physics– United Physical Society of the Russian Federation– Ukrainian Physical Society– Belarussian Physical Society– Polish Physical Society– Institute of Physics, UK– Croatian Physical Society– Physics Scientific Section, Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists

Mirrors of PhysNet

• nine mirrors of the PhysNet-sites:

– European Physical Society (EPS), Lausanne, Swiss – Physics Department of Virginia Tech, USA – Physics Department of the University of Bayreuth, Germany – eprints.org, UK – Russian Academy of Science, Chernogolovka – CCSD-CNRS, Lyon, France – Institute for Plasma Research, Gujarat, India– NIKHEF, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

– and of course at ISN Oldenburg, Germany

PhysNet: Distributed Services

• Collection of distributed content– Content-Providers keep all their (copy)rights– are responsible for maintaining the content

• Separation of Content and Layout

• Oldenburg runs the “machinery”– well documented– system independent programming

• Mirroring of whole layout, content, machinery

Distributed System

Distributed System

• Distributed Content

• Distributed Programming

• Distributed Workforce

SINN: Distributed Search-Engines

Techniques

• Content Routing

• Query Routing

• ???

Initiatives

• W3C: XML Query

• IETF: DASL/DAV

• OAi: OAPMH

IETF: DASL (webdav)

• WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning

• extension of HTTP to enable remote collaborative authoring of resources

• RFC 2518 (first results)– Ordered collection (non commutative)– Referential Binding (containment)

W3C: XML Query (often XQuery)

• WG started 1998 with workshop:– 98 participants with 66 positions

• Requirements published Jan 2000

• Currently– 60 members in WG

– Drafts every 3 months

– Usage Scenarios

• Revised Requirements Jul 2000

• Work on Details...

Requirements (in selection)• Definition independent of any protocol• open to updates• must support real and virtual documents• must support collection of documents• must support XML NS• must support datatypes from XML Schema• must support internationalization• must be able to provide access to information

derived from query environment

many thanks to Mark Needleman

Usage Scenarios (in selection)

• XML Document search and management

• XML processing from DBMS

• Integration of Multiple XML Sources

• Filtering Streams

• Collection - Collection Communication

• ...

many thanks to Mark Needleman

Usage Cases (in selection)

• Access to Relational Databases

• Text Retrieval

• Usage of XML NS

• Use of References and IDREF

• Preservation of Hierarchy and Sequence

• Queries based on Document Structure

• Distributed Databases

many thanks to Mark Needleman

Liaisons

• DOM

• XPointer

• IETF DASL: XQ easily incorporated into DASL

• Z39.50: Decision made not to do this! - „TOOOOO Conservative Protocol“ - should be restructured on basis of XQ

SINN

• Supported by DFN e.V.

• Development and implementation of techniques for “Network of Search-Engines”

• Close view (+work!) on international activities

• PhysNet Harvest as testbed