emulationServicesPublications

Publications

On this page we list the papers and publications were produced by the PLANETS PA/5 members. Papers with a URL are listed below, the others are added under the attachments (as long there is no restricting other policy).

University of Freiburg

• Bachelor thesis VNC-Interface for Java X86-Emulator Dioscuri adding a VNC to Dioscuri to allow e.g. for remote emulation, automation of interactive workflows and emulator unit testing. Abstract: As a part of the PLANETS project a handful of experiments was made trying to automate typically interactive procedures. These tests have shown that the remote control software VNC is a very promising solution. VNC builds upon RFB - a simple remote access protocol, which works at the framebuffer level and is consequently platform independent. The above mentioned tests were made using QEMU, which has an integrated VNC interface. The resulting automation technique should be generalized and tested with other suitable emulators. The goal of this work is the implementation of an integrated VNC server for another suitable emulator, thus help generalizing the above technique. As such an emulator Dioscuri is chosen. "Dioscuri is an x86 computer hardware emulator written in Java. It is designed by the digital preservation community to ensure documents and programs from the past can still be accessed in the future."

• Diploma thesis Software Archive for Emulation Web Service (including Java Code, not yet completely PLANETS integrated. Text is German only)

• iPRES2010 Seven steps for reliable emulation strategies - Solved problems and open issues (accepted as full paper for iPRES2010) Abstract: After four years of research within the PLANETS project and two years of KEEP the jigsaw puzzle of emulation becomes a more complete picture. Emulation strategies are seen as viable complement to migration now. An conceptual and theoretical groundwork has already been laid out, e.g. proper definition and selection of suitable emulators. However, integration into preservation frameworks and additional software archiving were open research questions. This paper discusses several aspects on reliable integration and proposes development steps for more complete emulation based strategies in long-term preservation.

• Bachelor thesis Mouse pointer mismatch and interactivity automation (German)

• OR2010: http://or2010.fecyt.es/Resources/documentos/PostersAbstracts/SoftwareArchivesVitalBase.pdf (presented at poster track, see image ) Abstract: Software archives are vital parts in long-term preservation strategies of digital artifacts because almost every digital preservation strategy depends on additional software components. At this point a software archive becomes important. Such a repository should not only store ancient applications and special object dependencies like fonts or required helper tools, but alsometa data like operation manuals, license keys and knowledge of operating ancient user environments. This paper describes the challenges of establishing and managing software archives and presents a constructive approach which can be integrated in existing preservation frameworks. Furthermore, the suggested approach offers the possibility to interactively ingest software components into the archive and enrich it with sufficient meta data.

• JCDL 2010: "Emulation based services in digital preservation" in "JCDL '10: Proceedings of the 10th annual joint conference on Digital libraries", K. Rechert, D. v. Suchodoletz, R. Welte, 2010, p. 365-368. (accepted&presented at conference , see slides ) Abstract: The creation of most digital objects occurs solely in interactive graphical user interfaces which were available at the particular time period. Archiving and preservation organizations are posed with large amounts of such objects of various types. At some point they will need to process these automatically to make them available to their users or convert them to a commonly used format. A substantial problem is to provide a wide range of different users with access to ancient environments and to allow using the original environment for a given object. We propose an abstract architecture for emulation services in digital preservation to provide remote user interfaces to emulation over computer networks without the need to install additional software components. Furthermore, we describe how these ideas can be integrated in a framework of web services for common preservation tasks like viewing or migrating digital objects.

• ECDL 2010: (upcoming conference in Glasgow) Abstract: Most digital objects are solely created in interactive graphical user environments. Archiving and preservation organizations are posed with large amounts of such objects of various types. At some point they will need to automatically process these to make them available to their users or convert them to a commonly used format. We present methods and a system architecture for emulation services which enables the preservation of interactive environments and their work-flows in a reliable manner. This system includes a framework for describing interactions with an interactive environment in an abstract manner, supporting reliable playback in an automated way and finally ensuring the preservation of specific operation knowledge by documenting and storing all components in a dedicated software archive. Finally we show how such a framework can be used as integrated service within a networked infrastructure like provided by the PLANETS project.

• RCIM News paper, Volume 80, January 2010, p. 22, 23 : Tackling the Problem of Complex Interaction Processes in Emulation and Migration Strategies Abstract: Digital objects require software environments to be handled, viewed or executed. Most of these environments interact with a human sitting in front of the computer. This characteristic puts a major challenge on organizations who would like to use these now obsolete environments to handle huge amount of objects in a non-interactive way for migration or in emulation.

• iPRES 2009: Novel Workflows for Abstract Handling of Complex Interaction Processes in Digital Preservation , see slides Abstract: The later preservation of digital objects poses completely different requirements from those at the original creation of the objects. The creation of most digital objects occurs solely in interactive graphical user interfaces which were available at the particular time period. For example an important long-lasting spare part for the aviation industry was designed with a specific CAD program which by now has disappeared from the market. Or, a museum has the rights to a famous author who wrote his books in a word processor on the Amiga, a now obsolete personal computing platform. Archiving and preservation organizations already have a large quantity of such objects in various types and the scale is only growing. The organizations have to make the objects available to their users now and they have to safeguard the digital longevity of the objects. Consequently at some point the organizations will need to make a presentation copy of the objects and they will need to convert the objects to a current, sustainable file format. Due to the scale the only financially and organizationally feasible way support both actions and achieve both goals is some sort of automated process.

• From Digital Artefact to Remotely Rendered Environments (re-issued as Journal article) International Journal of Digital Curation, Volume 4, No 3, 2009. Abstract: Emulation1 used as a long-term preservation strategy offers the possibility to keep digital objects in their original condition and experience them within their original computer environment. However, having only an emulator in place is not enough. To apply emulation as a fully-fledged strategy, an automated and user-friendly approach is required. This can not be done without knowledge of the original software and contextual information about it. This paper combines the existing concept of a view path, which captures contextual information of software, together with new insights to improve the concept with extra metadata. It provides regularly updated instructions for archival management to preserve and access its artifacts. The view path model requires extensions of the metadata set of primary object of interest and depends on additionally stored secondary objects for environment recreation like applications or operating systems. This paper also addresses a strategy to render digital objects by running emulation processes on distance. The advantages of this strategy are that it improves user convenience while maximizing emulation capabilities.

• Paper on software archiving: "Das Softwarearchiv - Eine Erfolgsbedingung für die Langzeitarchivierung digitaler Objekte", Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare, Nr. 63, 2010, ISSN 1022-2588, page 38-55.

• PhD. thesis on GRATE is available online (German)

• PhD. thesis Emulation requirements: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:0008-2008070219 ( English summary , incomplete, poster at Nestor conference Berlin, 2009 )

Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands

• Emulation whitepaper from 2003 http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/bibliotheek/docs/white_paper_emulatie_EN.pdf

IBM Netherlands N.V.

• Extensive UVC info as published on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Virtual_Computer