Trusted Remote Function Interface

Abstract

The Trusted Remote Function Interface (TRFI) is a small library that exposes services via a REST API to allow function execution with scientific programming languages. Functional units are uploaded to a remote server using the provided REST API. The API stores registered functions for later execution. Maintaining code using this technique allows clients to repeatedly execute functions without having the native language, typically Octave or Python, installed on the client machine. A common problem in scientific applications is the requirement for a program to interface with scientific scripting languages. Typically, this is not a straightforward approach for accomplishing the data exchange and subsequent function execution on that data from popular languages such as Java or JavaScript. This task is extraordinarily cumbersome if the interpreter, used by the scientific programming language, is not installed locally. By separating the function signature from the underlying implementation, and providing a uniform REST API, the TRFI library allows function interfacing in two ways. First, direct interfacing by using the equipped Java library. Second, the more common scenario is interfacing remotely by deploying the library using aJAX-RS compatible web server. The result of the TRFI library's design and the provided REST API is the facilitation of code interoperability and reuse for scientific applications.