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Exceed Application Story
Hummingbird's eXceed PC X Display Servers Help NASA Engineers, Design And Test Jet Propulsion Systems
Located in Cleveland, Ohio, NASA's Lewis Research Center has developed an international reputation for jet propulsion systems research. The Lewis Research Center is NASA's lead center for aeropropulsion, space power, space communications, electric propulsion and microgravity science. Lewis is currently responsible for developing the power system for the Space Station, and is involved in developing technologies to support advanced short take-off and vertical landing aircraft, in addition to managing the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite.
The enterprise computing environment of the Lewis Research Center is composed of a wide diversity of computing platforms including Cray Supercomputers, Convex Super -Mini computers, Digital VAXclusters, IBM and Amdahl mainframes, DEC, HP, SGI, SUN, IBM and Concurrent workstations.
Interoperability Between PCs And The Enterprise Computing Environment- Through The X Window System.
These computer systems provide a wide variety of scientific, office automation and business services. A common computing technology shared between many of these heterogeneous computing platforms is the X Window System. The ability to access X Windows System applications from the PC desktop, however, was an extremely important requirement for the Lewis Research Center, because of the large installed base of PCs, estimated to be approximately 5,000.
By installing Hummingbird's PC X display server software on personal computers, PC users now have access to the X based scientific, office automation and business applications available on many of these heterogeneous systems.
Les Farkas, Computer Engineer, at Lewis stated" Our enterprise computing environment has a wide variety of X Windows applications available on centralized systems and distributed hosts. Hummingbird's eXceed for Windows and DOS PC X server software satisfies a variety of PC-X requirements for both scientific and administrative applications. One of the greatest benefits of eXceed for Windows is the ability to cut and paste graphics data from X Windows into MS-Windows windows, graphics are then incorporated into reports.
eXceed for Windows integrates the two windowing environments, while allowing both MS-Windows applications to run at the same time as X Windows applications. The ability to run eXceed on the PC, allows the researcher to interact with the Lewis Information Management System (LIMS) MS-Windows based office automation software, while at the same time enabling the user to employ the PC as a scientific data analysis tool.
This environment allows PC users to dynamically choose the best solution relative to their immediate computing and application requirements. "
Aerodynamic Engineering and Data Analysis
Engineering and analysis of data generated from aerodynamic testing of engine models in wind tunnels and other settings, are some of the primary applications used in jet propulsion engine research. PC users are employing the eXceed X servers to display plots and images generated from tests, with commercially available visualization and analysis software such as IDEAS, PATRAN and PV Wave.
TRADAR-3
The central Transient Data Acquisition and Reduction system (TRADAR-3) is used by several facilities at the Lewis Research Center to gather and analyze high speed data. Scanalyzer, an X based application, developed by Creare, Inc, displays digitized signals in both time and frequency domains in near realtime. Users running eXceed on their PCs can remotely login to the TRADAR-3 system (running on a Cuncurrent 6700 workstation), setup test configurations, control digitizing, viewrealtime animated plots and perform graphical post processing from their PCs. After gathering data from a variety of sources and systems, eXceed is being used to support the post-processing analysis phase.
eXceed and 3270 Connectivity
One of the administrative requirements that eXceed supports indirectly, is access to mainframe computers through 3270 emulation. By using a 3270 emulator (TN3270 in an xterm or OpenConnect 3179G) running on a workstation, users are exploiting eXceed PC X server software to get multiple 3270 windows into their mainframe environments. With workstations functioning as application servers for the emulation software, a desktop PC provides access to character or graphics based 3270 and 3179G applications. This environment enables current mainframe applications to interact with the user in a familiar way, and at the same time provides the user with a migration path to other systems.
Les Farkas concludes "PC users at the NASA Lewis Research Center have discovered that by augmenting their PCs with Hummingbird's eXceed PC X display server software they can efficiently utilize their PC ADP investment, and access the wealth of X based software available on their enterprise computing network".