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Science Tools Corporation Charts Road Ahead for Computational Unification of Science

OAKLAND, CA, December, 7, 2002 - Science Tools Corporation announced plans today to implement the worlds first system to unify the disparate worlds of the computational sciences under a single system. "One of the greatest visions for science is a computational unification in which every researcher can interact with all other researchers through the use of a single research system," states Richard Troy, the corporation's Chief Scientist. The new system, based upon the corporation's BigSur System™, will have several distinct functions, from a basic repository of information about researchers, research centers and the work they do, to a processing engine which can perform the actual computational steps necessary to join disparate data-sets in scientifically valid ways.

Participating researchers may register their work themselves and, optionally, participate in an ambitious plan to make their data products and processing functions more readily accessible to others, either directly, or using collaboration tools which protect data and processing functions from unintended disclosure. The system contains a fully distributed object management system capable of tracking data objects throughout the world, and is easily extensible to include management of meta-data useful as selection criteria. The system is designed to utilize a very significant percentage of existing software and computational resources to accomplish its goals, so existing access systems may be harnessed to further these ends. By acting as a library of functions which can bring about the transformation of data between various forms, the system may eventually contain the necessary functions to unify the computational sciences.

The BigSur System™, upon which the new system is based, derives from the BigSur interdisciplinary research project conducted as an alternative architecture for the NASA Earth Observing System - Distributed Information System in the mid 1990's at the University of California, Berkeley. The commercial version has been in production use at major research centers since 1997 and has been substantially extended with patented and patent-pending technologies.

"As more and more researchers expose their data, meta-data, and computational functions using a common means, the unification of the sciences may come about through a library of transformative functions and a processing system capable of performing them," adds Mr. Troy. The corporation is presently seeking partners and supporters who wish to help bring about the realization of this vision.

Headquartered in Oakland, CA, Science Tools is a leading provider of software for researchers and research centers to manage science and scientific enterprise. Science Tools also offers innovative technologies for interdisciplinary research, super-computing clusters, archiving, database-vendor independent SQL access, Java security and other enterprise-critical functions. For more information about Science Tools Corporation, please visit our Web site at ScienceTools.com.

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