Easy and Effective Computing Environment on the WWW

Computational methods have become a primary tool in the investigation of biological, chemical and physical processes. The computation chain needed for these scientific computations often consists of several separate programs by different authors on various platforms and often requires 3D visualizations of intermediate results. Due to the complexity, tools developed by a particular research group are not readily available for use by other groups, nor even by the non-experts within the same research group. To alleviate this situation, and to foment the easy and wide distribution of computational tools worldwide, we developed an Easy and Effective Computing Environment (EECE) on the WWW including interactive 3D visualization that can be used with any web browser. Java based technologies were used to provide a platform neutral, user-friendly solution. Java Server Pages (JSP), Java Servlets, Java Beans, JOGL (Java bindings for OpenGL), and Java Web Start were used to create a solution that simplifies the computing chain for the user allowing the user to focus on their scientific research. EECE hides complexity from the user and provides robust and sophisticated visualization through a web browser. 1