About the SORCER Lab

The Laboratory for Service-ORiented Computing  EnviRonment  (SORCER) is an interdisciplinary  laboratory at the Computer Science Department, in Texas Tech University. Our principal goal is research in network, service, and object-centric programming and metaprogramming. We apply object-oriented techniques directly to the network, and everything on the network we treat as a service (service-orientation). SORCER  brings together faculty, researchers, and students in  research, development and experimentation with network objects and metacomputers (cyberspaces). Our members pursue innovations in distributed computing  that will yield substantive long-term improvements in the ways that people collaborate and share network resources. SORCER strives for excellence, relevance, and social purpose. The way not to get lost, in the complexities of our own making is our basic challenge. Thus, we create self-aware and autonomic environments as a conceptually simple cyberspaces of federated network resources. These federations provide an execution environment  for a new generation of interactive service-oriented programs. Thus, the computer is the cyberspace of services.

 The Laboratory studies and develops the next generations of the FIPER (Federated Intelligent Product EnviRonment) environment.

Dr. Michael Sobolewski is the Principal Investigator.

Research

The Laboratory's current research falls into seven principal domains: Service-Oriented Programming, Service-Oriented Computing Environment, Service-Oriented Programming Development Tools, Service-Federated Assurance and Security, Self-Aware Service Federations, Autonomic Service Federations, and Service Federated Intergrids (Cyberspaces).

Service-Oriented Programming
Researches issues in utilizing network objects to execute a network-centric and reliable control strategy of megaprograms.

Service-Oriented Computing Environment
Develops architectural innovations by distributing service and context providers with jobbers and other infrastructure providers to enable execution of service-oriented programs.

Service-Oriented Programming Development Tools
Improves service-oriented programming and software deployment by improving the methods used to create, test, debug and monitor execution of such programs.

Service-Federated Assurance and Security
Studies the authentication, authorization, confidentiality, accountability methodologies to secure service-oriented environments (metacomputers).

Self-Aware Service Federations
Develops technology that facilitates self-awareness of intelligent service federations. To build and investigate high-performance, practical self-healing software systems for service-federated environments.

Autonomic Service Federations
Conducts research that combines computer science and biology and facilitates self-management of very complex service-federated environments.

Service Federated Intergrids
Leads the object-oriented federated services to its full potential by developing common integrating frameworks to foster compute grid integration, evolution, and ensure its operability.

History

The SORCER Laboratory has its roots in the FIPER project founded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Dr. Michael Sobolewski, a chief architect, has led this software development at GE Global Research Center. In September 2002 he joined the Computer Science Department at TTU and pursued his vision for federated grid computing with funds from GE/NIST to continue FIPER enhancements.

SORCER  remains committed to leading the service-oriented  revolution, expanding the boundaries of today's information technology and forecasting and redefining the capabilities of the computer as the grid of network objects.

Computer Science SORCER Lab Box 43104, Boston & 8th, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA Tel: (806)-742-5851   Fax: (806) 742-3519 Email: sobol@sorcersoft.org