DSVOL II - a distributed visualization and sonification application communicating via an XML-based protocol

Distribution of the visualization process over the World Wide Web allows remote access to expensive resources, and the cooperation amongst teams of experts that are located in different places. This paper presents an architecture and a corresponding prototype implementation of a distributed system for visualization and sonification of scientific data. The distribution is accomplished by the addition of visualization and sonification servers, accessible over the Internet, and implemented using an XML-based SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) protocol. The system is an evolution of a previously-developed prototype, with improvement in the visualization and in the distribution aspects of the architecture. The former distribution scheme employed CORBA (Common Object Request Broker). A discussion on the use of both distribution tools is given in the light of visualization tasks.