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Migrating legacy scientific applications towards CORBA‐based client–server architectures
Author(s) -
Sang Janche,
Follen Gregory,
Kim Chan,
Lopez Isaac,
Townsend Scott
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.415
Subject(s) - computer science , fortran , common object request broker architecture , interface (matter) , scheme (mathematics) , operating system , reusability , code (set theory) , object oriented programming , overhead (engineering) , legacy code , variable (mathematics) , remote procedure call , distributed computing , distributed object , source code , software , programming language , mathematical analysis , mathematics , set (abstract data type) , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method
A distributed object is a reusable, self‐contained piece of software that cooperates with other objects on the same machine or across a network in a plug‐and‐play fashion via a well‐defined interface. The Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) attempts to provide a collaborative aircraft engine design and simulation environment based on this concept. Many scientific applications in aerodynamics and solid mechanics are written in Fortran. Refitting this legacy Fortran code with distributed objects can increase code reusability. In this paper, we focus on the novel use of a remote variable scheme to help programmers migrate the Fortran code towards a client–server architecture. This scheme gives the client the capability of accessing variables at the server site and makes it easier for programmers to couple component engine code. Through the operator overloading features in C++, remote variables can be used in much the same way as traditional variables. The remote variable scheme adopts the lazy update approach and the prefetch method. Preliminary performance evaluation shows that communication overhead can be greatly reduced. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.