An IIOP architecture for Web-enabled physiological models

This paper develops a specific information architecture to serve complex physiological information models and a means of delivering these models in a manner that allows interactive and distributed use. By redesign of existing models for distributed use, the IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) architecture provides general access across the Internet; the methods are replicable with many different types of physiological models that produce a variety of results. This paper defines and explains the complete architecture for the user interface, the model encapsulation, and the communication layer between the client and server by developing a general example. Using the equivalent of interactive browsers to access remote models and display the results, the IIOP architecture is built up using platform-independent technology such as CORBA, Java and XML. The existing physiological models are first encapsulated by a suitable software language respect to the legacy models. Then CORBA IDL-XML interfaces are built accordingly as a broker interface connecting user interfaces to encapsulating interfaces. Therefore, the standard user interfaces on the browsers are easily built to access these models through the CORBA ORB and the encapsulating interfaces. This interface software is capable of interpreting and displaying very high-level descriptors and model output such that the amount of data required to be transmitted over the Internet is reduced.