2011-04-28 Thursday - AurionProject.org

I have an interest in monitoring the development of the Nationwide Health Information Network - and happened to see an announcement today regarding the Aurion Project

"The Aurion Project, an evolution of the Federal Health Architecture’s CONNECT open source project focused on achieving health IT interoperability using nationally recognized standards, is off to an ambitious start. Its inaugural Aurion Community Town Hall Meeting was held April 12 to begin its chartering and membership process. Meanwhile, the Aurion 4.0 software is set for release May 3."

Aurion Wiki
http://wiki.aurionproject.org/display/AurionMain/Aurion+WIKI


Aurion Specifications
http://aurionproject.org/products/specs-in-aurion

TeamForge / Project Home / Source Code Repositories
http://development.aurionproject.org/sf/projects/aurion

After doing a bit of reading, I also came across this interesting bit (a friend specializes in all things Semantic - and I thought this was a great example for him to highlight in his client discussions) - related to semantic translation "Terminology Services"

 see section 2.2.5.2 on page-34:

http://wiki.aurionproject.org/download/attachments/983312/CONNECT_Release_3_1_Integrated_Interface_Description_Document_091410.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1300208064000

"The semantic meaning of medical data refers to the ability for a system
to understand the meaning of the medical data that is being shared. When
two separate medical computer systems are connected, it can be difficult
for one system to understand and compute on the data from another
system. In order to successfully compute upon the data, the semantic
meaning of the sending system must be understood by the receiving
system. Terminologies are used by medical systems to communicate precise
semantics. Terminologies use codes, text, hierarchical layout, and
relationships to communicate meaning. Often times differing medical
systems will use different terminologies. Terminology services are used
to cross map one terminology to another. They are also used to provide
translation services and code relationship services. As the Nationwide
Health Information Network moves forward, these services will become
more and more critical so that the differing medical systems are able to
semantically understand the data they are receiving."

2011-04-23 Friday - Microsoft HPC Server

I am very intrigued by the potential future direction of Microsoft's High Performance Computing (HPC) Server Group - and have spent quite a bit of time reading through their material.

A few years ago I spent a fair bit of time studying MPI (see links here, here, and here) for possible use in the design of a client's new Enterprise SOA infrastructure capabilities (for distributed parallel and cluster computing) - and was very pleased to learn that the HPC technologies are based on  MPICH2 from Argonne National Laboratory.

http://www.microsoft.com/hpc

http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/technical-resources/

MSDN: Microsoft High Performance Computing for Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff976568.aspx

MSDN: Using HPC
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc907080%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

MSDN Virtual Labs: Introducing .NET4 Parallel Extensions
https://cmg.vlabcenter.com/default.aspx?moduleid=cc0bc14f-b222-4c3b-b29b-7f729df2af08

MSDN: Microsoft MPI
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb524831%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

Microsoft TechNet: Windows HPC Server
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc514029.aspx

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Resource Kit
http://resourcekit.windowshpc.net/developer.htm

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Community
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/community/hpc-forums-blogs.aspx

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite Evaluation 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4b013794-f6fc-4070-b769-9acd0c140ca9&displaylang=en

I also found a comparison between Dryad and Hadoop here:
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/