RESTlabs: A prototype web 2.0 architecture for Remote Labs

This paper reports on the progress of work underway at the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology at the University of Queensland to construct a new remote laboratories architecture based on contemporary and emerging web standards. The RESTlabs architecture uses the concept of self-describing APIs to provide discoverability of capabilities and the replacement of bespoke code with code generated from machine-readable designs. The prototype currently under development allows experiment services within the Lab Server to be generated from a design specification. This mirrors the existing capability in the RESTlabs client to generate an Experiment User Interface (UI) from a design specification retrieved from the Lab Server. Plans for an Experiment Service Designer as a component of the Lab Server, along similar lines to the Experiment UI Designer component in the RESTlabs client, are described. The schema for Experiment Service APIs is being conformed to specifications promoted by Google in the hope of leveraging a wider toolset into the Remote Labs arena and enabling workflows across multiple experiments and other services.