Common Instrument Middleware Architecture Research Articles

VIRA: A CIMA Based System for the Operation of Remote Scientific Instruments

The common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) has been adopted and is being further developed as part of a project that includes the use of virtual instruments in a Web browser driven system for remote access to scientific instruments. Enhancements include distinct separation of concern for the modular components that make up the system, and a flexible message parcel schema.

Connecting users to instruments and sensors: portals as multi‐user GUIs for instrument and sensor facilities

AbstractThe Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) aims at integrating instruments and sensors into computing and storage Grids through a standard interface methodology that existing and future instrument facilities can provide. This instrument interface provides a base which data acquisition and reduction applications can rely on as the design of the underlying facilities evolves and changes. After connecting instruments and sensors in a reliable and secure manner to applications, the next step is to integrate instruments, data acquisition, reduction and analysis applications with community provided resources such as application servers, temporary and archival storage. Practices and workflows at the instrument facilities also need to be captured and presented to users. Portals provide a natural approach to a ‘community’ interface to instrument and sensor facilities. Here we describe the CIMA Crystallography portal, a portal based on GridSphere that provides a user interface to equipment and workflows for a global federation of crystallography laboratories. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Instrument Monitoring, Data Sharing, and Archiving Using Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA)

The Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) aims at Grid-enabling a wide range of scientific instruments and sensors to enable easy access to and sharing and storage of data produced by these instruments and sensors. This paper describes the implementation of CIMA applied to the field of single-crystal X-ray crystallography. To allow the researchers to easily view the current and past data streams from the instruments or sensors in a laboratory, a crystallography portal and associated portlets were developed for this application. The CIMA-based crystallography system provides an opportunity for anyone with Web access to observe and use crystallographic and other data from laboratories that previously had only limited access.