DOVE: distributed objects based scientific visualization environment

This paper describes the design and performance of a distributed, multi-tier architecture for scienti c data visualization. A novel aspect of this framework is its integration of Java IDL, the CORBA distributed object computing middleware with JavaBeans, the Java Component model to provide a exible, interactive framework for distributed, highperformance scienti c data visualization. CORBA server objects running in a distributed collaborative environment provide data acquisition and perform data-intensive computations. Clients as Java Bean components use these server objects for data retrieval and provide an environment for visualization. The server objects use JDBC, the Java application programming interface to SQL databases, to retrieve data from the database. We discuss the system framework and its components and describe an example application and its performance.