Applying Java for the Retrieval of Multimedia Knowledge Distributed on High Performance Clusters on the Internet

This paper describes a Java application for interfacing with an Internet based distributed multimedia knowledge retrieval system. The aim of this system is to facilitate the access of distributed knowledge residing on remote computer systems. The motivation for this work is the increasing demand for applications that take advantage of the Internet and local intranets for accessing and integrating distributed knowledge bases. Our solution is composed of two parts that integrate multimedia distributed knowledge bases, high performance heterogeneous computing, and internet-based programming. The back end is a high performance distributed knowledge base engine based on our associative logic programming model and the message passing paradigm for heterogeneous distributed computing. The front end consists of a portable graphical user interface, a parser and a compiler, and a query management system for interfacing with the distributed knowledge base system. While the knowledge base engine is implemented in C++ for performance on a variety of high performance computer systems, the front end is based on Java technology for portability, multimedia capability, and Internet functionality.