Robert E. McGrath--Pointers

McGrath Home Page: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath
e-mail: mcgrath@ncsa.uiuc.edu

**Note: URLs older than 2 years ago may have moved. Apologies for any inconvenience.**

Dissertation

Semantic Infrastructure for a Ubiquitous Computing Environment, Ph. D. Dissertation, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October, 2005.
Available as:
Department of Computer Science Technical Report, UIUCDCS-R-2005-2587, September 2005. http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/techreports.php?report=UIUCDCS-R-2005-2587

Books

Nancy J. Yeager and Robert E. McGrath, Web Server Technology: The Advanced Guide for World Wide Web Information Providers, Morgan Kauffman Publishers, March, 1996.

Submitted and in Press

Myers J, Futrelle J, Gaynor J, Plutchak J, Bajcsy P, Kastner J, Kotwani K, Lee J, Marini L, McGrath R, McLaren T, Liu Y, "Embedding Data in Knowledge Spaces (accepted)", UK e-Science 2008 All Hands Meeting, Edinburgh, September 8, 2008
Alan Craig, Steve Downey, Guy Garnett, Robert E. McGrath, and Jim Myers, "Immersive Environments for Massive Multiperson Online Learning", Ubiquitous Learning, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (eds.), 2008.
Jim Myers and Robert E. McGrath, "Cyberenvironments: Towards Truly Ubiquitous Learning", Ubiquitous Learning, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis (eds.), 2008.
James Myers, Luigi Marini, Rob Kooper, Terry McLaren, Robert E. McGrath, Joe Futrelle, Peter Bajcsy, Andrew Collier, Yong Liu, and Shawn Hampton, "A Digital Synthesis Framework for Virtual Observatories (submitted)", UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, Edinburgh, 8- 11 September 2008
James D. Myers , Joe Futrelle, Jeff Gaynor, Joel Plutchak, Peter Bajcsy, Jason Kastner, Kailash Kotwani, Jong Sung Lee, Luigi Marini, Robert E. McGrath , Terry McLaren, and Yong Liu, "Embedding Data within Knowledge Spaces (submitted)", UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, Edinburgh, 8- 11 September 2008

Recent Publications, Presentations, Documents, and URLs

2008

Robert E. McGrath, "Ubiquitous Infrastructure for Deep Accontability (accepted)", 5th International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications (CITSA 2008), Orlando, June 29-July 2 2008.
Patricia S. Taylor and Robert E. McGrath, "Creating Friendly Places in Intelligent Environments" to be presented at Environmental Design and Research Association Conference, Veracruz, May 28 - June 1, 2008
Robert E. McGrath and Joe Futrelle, "Reasoning About Provenance with OWL and SWRL", to be presented at AAAI 2008 Spring Symposium "AI Meets Business Rules and Process Management", Palo Alto, March 24-26, 2008. [pdf] "
Moreau, L., Friere, J., McGrath, R. E., Myers, J., Futrelle, J., Paulson, P. (2008). The Open Provenance Model, Provenance Challenge Review January 1 - Feburary 14, 2008

2007

Yong Liu, Robert E. McGrath, James D. Myers and Joe Futrelle, "Towards A Rich-Context Participatory Cyberenvironment", Grid Computing Environments Workshop (GCE07) at Supercomputing07, 2007.
James D. Myers and Robert E. McGrath, "Cyberenvironments: Adaptive Middleware for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure", 6th Workshop on Adaptive and Reflective Middleware (ARM'07), Newport Beach, November 26, 2007.
Loretta Auvil, Eugene Grois, Xavier Llora, Greg Pape, Vered Goren, Barry Sanders, Bernie Acs, Robert McGrath, "A Flexible System for Text Analysis with Semantic Network", Digital Humanities 2007, Urbana, June 2-8, pp. 17-19, 2007. [pdf] (draft)
Robert E. McGrath, "Programs Are Not Literature, Even by Analogy (correspondence)", Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No. 1, January, 2007, pp. 11-12.

2006 and earlier

Roy H Campbell, Guy Garnett and Robert E. McGrath "Cyber-Physical Systems: Position Paper", http://varma.ece.cmu.edu/cps/ NSF Workshop On Cyber-Physical Systems: Research Motivation, Techniques and Roadmap, Austin, TX., October 16 - 17, 2006 http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/GrandChallengesforCyber.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, D2K Web Service Deployment: Extracting Usage Data National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 29 June 2006, revised 10 August, 2006.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/D2KWSAccounting-v2.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, D2K Support for Standard Content Repositories: Design Notes: Request For Comments National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 2006-07-17.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/RFC-D2K-Repo-Notes.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, Emily Wu, Doru Marcusiu, Andrew Shirk, D2K Web Service Deployment: Resource Usage Accounting National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Revised 18 May 2006.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/d2k_usage_implementation.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, Emily Wu, Doru Marcusiu, Andrew Shirk, Terry Fleury, Von Welch, D2K Web Service Deployment: Security Review National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 8 March 2006.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/D2KWSSecurityIssues-2.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, Emily Wu, and Andrew Shirk, D2K Web Service Deployment: Report on Testbed Experiments National Center for Supercomputing Applications, February 10, 2006.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/NCSA-eh-phylomat-whitepaper-38.pdf
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/Cyberarch-17-Feb-2006.ppt
Patricia S. Taylor and Robert E. McGrath, "Privacy and Public Access in the Wireless World: Issues to Consider Now", Environmental Research and Development Association (EDRA), Vancouver, April 27, 2005.
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/docs/WirelessEnvironments.pdf
MuQun Yang, Robert E. McGrath, and Mike Folk, "HDF5: A High Performance Data Format for Earth Science" American Meteorological Society, January, 2005
MuQun Yang, Robert E. McGrath, and Mike Folk, "Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Applications Using HDF and HDF5" American Meteorological Society, January, 2005
MuQun Yang, Robert E. McGrath, and Mike Folk, "Performance Study of HDF5-WRF IO modules", WRF Workshop, June 26, 2004. http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/apps/WRF-ROMS
Anand Ranganathan, Robert E. McGrath, Roy H. Campbell, M. Dennis Mickunas, "Use of Ontologies in a Pervasive Computing Environment", Knowledge Engineering Review,Volume 18, Number 3, pp. 209-220, 2004.
Robert E. McGrath, Anand Ranganathan, M. Dennis Mickunas, Roy H. Campbell, "Investigations of Semantic Interoperability in Ubiquitous Computing Environments", 15TH International Conference Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS),
Marina del Rey, November 3-5, 2003.
Robert E. McGrath and M. Dennis Mickunas, "Dynamic Personal Roles For Ubiquitous Computing" (Poster) OOPSLA 2003, Anaheim, October 27-30, 2003.
Robert E. McGrath, Anand Ranganathan, Roy Campbell, and M. Dennis Mickunas, "Use of Ontologies in Pervasive Computing Environments", UIUCDCS-R-2003-2332 UILU-ENG-2003-1719 Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, April, 2003.
ftp://ftp.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/dept/tech_reports/2003/UIUCDCS-R-2003-2332.pdf.gz
Robert E. McGrath and M. Dennis Mickunas, "Dynamic Roles: Organizing Software Representatives for People", UIUCDCS-R-2003-2355 UILU-ENG-2003-2355 Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, July, 2003.
ftp://ftp.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/dept/tech_reports/2003/UIUCDCS-R-2003-2355.pdf.gz
Robert E. McGrath, "Conversion from HDF4 to HDF5: Hybrid HDF-EOS Files", The Earth Observer, Volume 14, Number 2, March/April, 2002, pp. 19-23. http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_observ/pdf/Mar_Apr02.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, "XML and Scientific File Formats", August, 2003. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/NARA/XML_and_Binary.pdf
Robert E. McGrath, "XML and Scientific File Formats", Geological Society of America Annual Meeting Seattle, Washington,November 2-5 2003.
MuQun Yang, Robert E. McGrath, and Mike Folk, "A High Performance I/O Module the HDF5 WRF I/O Module", WRF Workshop, June 11, 2003
Lecture to CS497, October 24, 26, 2000. ``Discovery Protocols for Ubiquitous Computing'' and ``Resource Description Framework (RDF)''
``Discovery and Its Discontents: Discovery Protocols for Ubiquitous Computing,'' Computer Science Technical Report UIUCDCS-R-99-2132. April, 2000. http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/techreports.php?report=UIUCDCS-R-2000-2154
``Discovery Protocols for Ubiquitous Computing'', invited talk for the Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Systems, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, April 5. 2000.

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/Discovery/

Robert E. McGrath, Joe Futrelle, Ray Plante, Damien Guillaume, ``Digital Library Technology for Locating and Accessing Scientific Data'', ACM Digital Libraries '99, August, 1999, pp. 188-194.
``Integrating Scientific Datasets and Digital Libraries'', invited talk for the Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Systems, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, April 13. 1999.

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/CESDIS/

R. Plante, R. Crutcher, and R. McGrath, "The NCSA Astronomy Digital Image Library: From Data Archiving to Data Publishing", for Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume 16, Number 1, November, 1999, pp. 49-62.
Mike Folk, Robert McGrath, "HDF5: A New Scientific Data Format (Poster)", ADASS VIII, Urbana, 1-4 November, 1998.
Mike Folk, Albert Cheng, Robert E. McGrath, "HDF5: A New File Format and I/O Library for Scientific Data Management", Astronomical Data Analysis software and Systems VIII Proceedings, David M. Mehringer, Raymond L. Plante, and Douglas A. Roberts, eds., Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 172, 1999.
Robert E. McGrath, ``Implications of Technology Trends for Semantic Indexing (LIS 450 Term paper)'', 11 December 1998. http://vesta.ncsa.uiuc.edu/LIS450/ (Contains an argument for why the natural size of scientific communities is about 150 people.)

Accessing Space Science Data

Project 30 -- Accessing Space Science Data (1997-1999)

A NASA-funded project, explored Java, VRML, and Z39.50 (interoperable search and retrieval). See the Project 30 Web pages (very old).

Project 30 Home page, http://vesta.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Project30/

Web and Distributed Architecture

Nancy J. Yeager and Robert E. McGrath, Web Server Technology: The Advanced Guide for World Wide Web Information Providers, Morgan Kauffman Publishers, March, 1996.
Robert E. McGrath, Xinjian Lu, and Mike Folk, ``Java Applications Using NCSA HDF Files'' Concurrency: Practice and Experience, Vol. 9, No. 11, pp. 1113-1125, November, 1997. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/mcgrath/JCSE/ (Originally presented at the ACM Workshop on Java for Science and Engineering Computation, Las Vegas, NV, June 21 1997.)
Robert E. McGrath, ``The NCSA HDF Java(TM) Interface: Design and Implementation'', 26 March 1997
http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/hdf/java/hdf/
Robert E. McGrath, ``UIUC DLI Project Scale-up: A Technical Evaluation''

A major study of this major project, concentrating on how well it will scale up.

Robert E. McGrath, ``How does HDF mix with Java?'', (http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/horizon/java-and-hdf.html)

Accumulation of notes about how Java accesses native code libraries and other issues pertinent to accessing large, complex scientific data.

Robert E. McGrath, ``A Scientific Data Server: The Conceptual Design'', http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/horizon/DataServer/sds_design.html

A Thought Paper. Ideas for what we'd like to do.

M. Folk and R. E. McGrath, ``Project Horizon: Problems addressed Lessons learned and accomplishments Future directions'', Presentation to Federal Webmasters Workshop, August 7, 1996.

the good and bad points of Java

R. McGrath and R. Plante, ``Accessing Space Science Data Using the Internet'', project proposal, funded. See the project home page at:

http://vesta.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Project30/

``Caching for Large Scale Systems: Lessons from the WWW'' , D-Lib Magazine , January, 1996.

An overview of the state of the art of Web caching.

Lagoze, Carl and McGrath, Robert and Overly, Ed and Yeager, Nancy. ``A Design for Inter-Operable Secure Object Stores (ISOS)''. Cornell Computer Science Technical Report TR95-1558. 1995.
http://historical.ncstrl.org/tr/ps/cornellcs/TR95-1558.ps
Adam Cain and Robert E. McGrath, ``Digital Commerce on the World Wide Web'', in NCSA access, Summer 1995.

Overview of cryptography and protocols for digital commerce.

"Notes on HTTP Proxy Servers and Firewalls"

A very short overview--see Yeager & McGrath, 1996, for complete coverage.

Robert E. McGrath, Nancy Yeager, and Adam Cain, ``World Wide Web servers at NCSA'', in NCSA access, Spring 1995.

Overview of the NCSA Web server architecture.

Eric Dean Katz, Michelle Butler, and Robert E. McGrath, ``A Scalable HTTP Server: The NCSA Prototype'' Presented at the First International WWW Conference, May 1994.

The original and classic description of the NCSA Web server architecture.

Web Server Performance and Scalability

Performance Results

Thomas T. Kwan, Robert E. McGrath, and Daniel A. Reed, "NSCA's World Wide Web Server: Design and Performance," IEEE Computer, Vol. 28, No. 11, pp. 68-74, November 1995.

A definitive study of NCSA Web server traffic.

Thomas T. Kwan, Robert E. McGrath, and Daniel A Reed, ``User Access Patterns to NCSA's World Wide Web Server''

An online version of the above.

Performance of Several Web Server Platforms , January, 1995.

``Comments on Haynes & Company CGI Benchmarks'' November, 1995.

Analysis of a widely bally-hooed report.

``Performance of Several HTTP Demons on an HP 735 Workstation''

The classic study: NCSA 1.3, 1.4, CERN, and Netscape httpd compared on an indentical HP 735 platform.

Methodology

Measuring the Performance of HTTP Daemons: February, 1996.

The state of the art of Web benchmarking.

``What We Do and Don't Know About the Load on the NCSA WWW Server (September 28, 1994)'' Colloquium.

This one is rather dated.

Personal Documents and Fun

"Who's that on the line? Authentication of computer and psychic channels"

Acknowledgements

This work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the Advance Research Projects Agency, corporate partners and the state and University of Illinois, and NASA Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) ``Public Use of Earth and Space Science Over the Internet''. It does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of any of the sponsoring parties, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

Responsibility:

(mcgrath@ncsa.uiuc.edu)

Robert E. McGrath

05/03/08