Remote Access to a Symbolic Computation System for Algebraic Topology: A Client-Server Approach

摘要

Kenzo is a Symbolic Computation system created by Serger-aert for computing in Algebraic Topology. It is programmed in Common Lisp and this programming language also acts as user interface. In this paper, a prototype to provide remote access for Kenzo is presented. This has been accomplished by using Corba technology: clients have been developed both in Java and Common Lisp (the server is always in Common Lisp, being a wrapper of the original Kenzo program). Instead of using one CORBA IDL to encode each data structure, our approach incorporates a generic way of transfering every data structure through XML strings; specifically, by means of an XML extension of MathML. This research should be understood as a first step towards building a distributed computation system for Algebraic Topology.