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Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA)

Objective

 

Research instruments vary widely in their design, construction, and interfaces. The Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) is designed to provide a single virtualisation layer to hide this complexity, and offer a relatively simple Web service interface to the rest of the data pipeline.

By offering CIMA interfaces to their products, instrument manufacturers can take advantage of a broader range of control application and data sinks (data fusion and analysis software). CIMA also facilitates interaction between research groups working at different places in the value chain of scientific inquiry.

We are currently applying CIMA to a range of instrument types, including crystallography using high brilliance X-ray sources and remote sensors on the Great Barrier Reef. Instrument users can reuse existing software when instruments are modified or upgraded.

Functionality

 

Significant to the design is the difference between the two similar but distinct scenarios: remote access and distributed operation. Remote access allows a scientist working off-site to access the instrument. Full support for remote access would allow such a scientist to perform all the tasks that he/she could perform on-site.

CIMA is a flexible tool designed to interact with a wide range of scientific instruments and sensors to enable easy access to, sharing and storage of data produced by these instruments and sensors.

Some of the CIMA attributes include:

  • Flexibility in network transport
  • Adaptability to new instruments
  • Integration of instruments, computing and storage as Web and Grid services
  • Plugins connecting to a Web service CIMA stack, enabling code re-use and support applications in different instrument settings

 

Archeticture

 

CIMA diagram

 

 

 

Customers

 

In collaboration with the University of Indiana and the University of Sydney, the JCU e-Research Centre is applying solutions to the scientific community in Australia through the use of CIMA in the following ways:

  • Federated storage network for X-Ray crystallography data along Australia's east coast (Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Sydney, JCU)
  • Expansions to the CIMA framework implementation to include different instrumentation devices
  • Use of CIMA for data collection from ReefGrid (smart reef weather station)
  • Use of CIMA for data collection from HFRadar's
  • Collaboration with AIMS to use CIMA for data logger data collection
  • Expansion to the CIMA interface via WSRP

 

 

 

 

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