General information

eScience technologies offer great hope for massive improvements in the quality and quantity of science that we are able to do, particularly in the domains of data management and information delivery.
Many of our escience tools rely on XML and related technologies. However, an enormous number of scientific codes are written in Fortran, and many scientists do much of their work using Fortran. Unfortunately, Fortran knows very little about XML, and vice versa; thus many useful scientific codes are de facto excluded from the world of escience.
However, there is an increasing number of tools being made available to integrate Fortran into an XML-aware world, and there is a large body of knowledge and lessons learned on sensible strategies for making use of existing scientific codebases in escientific ways.
This workshop will aim to instruct participants in the uses of several Fortran-XML tools, and to transfer practical experience about successes in this area. It is expected that participants will then be able to modify their codes to both write and read XML files.

Who is the workshop aimed at?

The workshop is primarily aimed at Fortran programmers who appreciate the need to make the codes interact with XML tools, either now or in the future. We expect that participants will have a reasonable knowledge of Fortran programming. We will require participants to have a basic background knowledge of XML, and we anticipate that this can be acquired from resources provided on our gridinfo.niees.ac.uk web site.

Outline of the workshop

The workshop is scheduled to last for three days, with the idea that Day 3 is an optional wholly-practical day. The first two days will involve a mixture of talks and practical sessions.
Day 1 will involve an introduction to generating XML output from Fortran, and give an introduction to some of the associated escience data-handling technologies.
Day 2 will involve more substantial XML-generation, and an introduction to the use of XML input in Fortran codes.
Day 3 is an optional extra day. Participants are invited to bring with them examples of their own Fortran codes, and will be able to use the experience of the first two days to start to include XML technologies into their own codes. Experienced Fortran/XML developers will be on hand to assist.

Programme

Presentations are available from the NIEeS archive

Location

The workshop will be held at the University of Cambridge, in the Balfour computer room, which is located within the Computer Services department. Accommodation and conference dinner will be in Downing College.

Follow-on

It is anticipated that the workshop may generate interest in some follow-on activities. We will discuss the sort of follow-on activities that can be arranged, such as visits to NIEeS to demonstrate some of the escience/grid technologies and to provide help with installation and usage.

Registration of interest

Registration is now closed Registration is essential and must be done using our on-line booking form. Registration is free. Registration for UK academic participants includes accommodation in College and meals. Due to the fact that places are limited, we may not be able to accommodate all who register an interest. The NIEeS will fund sensible UK travel expenses if necessary for you to attend.

Contact and further information

For information about registration, and all other types of queries, please contact the NIEeS office in the first instance.