UCSD is investigating system and application support issues for a next-generation World Wide Web, called the "Active Web." The Active Web is premised on the support for active content, content that is rich in multimedia and references to other objects, and for mobile agents, programs that can move about and execute on remote servers, carrying out requests at a distance on behalf of clients. These servers are no longer passive databases as in today's Web, but context-sensitive knowledge networks that contain all kinds of active content. Between the servers, there is a constant exchange of agents, which add to, refine, form interconnections, and make consistent, the distributed content. In the Active Web, there is a high degree of resource sharing, usage is bought and sold as in a market economy, and security is paramount. This grant will allow UCSD to purchase large-scale computer and storage servers and a high-speed network that will connect the various laboratories, and will form a small-scale Active Web prototype.
The project is taking a department-wide coordinated approach, integrating the research efforts in systems, security, multimedia, content-based search, scientific metacomputing, and, tools for software/hardware design and analysis.
