This chapter focuses on technology trends with particular
emphasis on those that impact the Sabah IT infrastructure. With the continued
evolution of underpinning technology, users are going to be faced with
an even more bewildering array of choices in the future. One will see even
more technologies emerging that will need to be integrated into a coherent
system. The choice between implementing systems as soon as possible and
delaying decisions in order to get more favourable conditions will become
more difficult.
Fax technology is keeping pace with the evolving business needs by incorporating new messaging formats, supporting new technology such as multifunction devices, and developing multimedia messaging standards through the active participation of the telecommunication standards bodies.
Faxing of colour documents will be supported through an amendment to the current standard fax protocol set. The ITU-T T.42 amendment (T.Colour) will incorporate an enhanced fax negotiation process that will allow colour images to be transmitted in a fax message. This new standard is device independent allowing colour fax machines to both send and receive documents to more traditional black and white machines, though in a black and white format.
Through the use of new advancements in the fax protocol set, fax messaging is now in a position to support multimedia communications. Using BFT, V.Fast, and the data compression methods that are being developed it becomes realistic to transmit multimedia documents over existing copper wires and cables. However, a voice file cannot be part of a message to a fax machine that can only print on thermal paper. That is where the next generation of fax machines, called multifunction devices, comes into play.
Multifunction devices will represent the core of multimedia capable fax machines. These devices will be capable of faxing, copying, and printing among other abilities. They will be able to communicate electronically and receive complicated instructions from within the fax message. An example would be to send a fax to one of these devices telling it to print one hundred copies of page two of the fax. Since many of these devices will be connected directly to a computer, it will be realistic to include any number of binary files within a single fax, which could then be edited by the receiving device.
The multifunction devices have no need for a computer
to function, and they can be operated remotely through the enhanced fax
protocol. This is an extremely powerful feature as it allows the sender
to perform any of the tasks that the multifunction device is capable of
without having to be present. Many people who spend a lot of time out of
their office will benefit from the flexibility that multifunction devices
will give them.
The cable industry is beginning to build TCP/IP-ready WAN links that can support line speeds from 500 Kbps to 30 Mbps. Still in development, the initial target customer for cable WAN service is the residential computer user who wants faster on-line information access or interactive TV, or the teleworker who needs connectivity to the employer’s central site LAN.
Cable data networks are being designed to eliminate the lengthy dial-up and sign-on process inherent in analog services. The cable access device includes modem technology to convert the analog signal into digital data used by the computer. The network pipe itself is increasingly a fiber optic or hybrid fiber-coaxial cable designed for two-way communication in an asymmetric configuration. Data is carried downstream to the user over wide electromagnetic bands, while smaller bands carry commands and responses upstream to the cable provider’s head-end.
The disadvantages of existing cable networks are
the reputation for unreliable service and the fact that bandwidth is shared;
if one user ties up the WAN link with a high-bandwidth application, other
users suffer. Cable companies are currently designing distributed network
models that would connect smaller groups of users to multiple points of
presence to solve this problem. Furthermore, unlike ISDN, cable networks
are not currently optimised for two-way data communications (versus one-way
broadcast transmission). ISDN is standardised world-wide, whereas cable
addressing schemes and other internetworking standards have not yet been
developed. The cable standardisation process could take several years;
ISDN is a standardised offering now.
Switched Multi-megabit Data Service (SMDS) is a connectionless, cell-switched data transport service used to interconnect multiple-node enterprise LANs through the public telephone network. In fact, SMDS was designed to be the connectionless data service for ATM technology. SMDS is a standardised service that can be used as a backbone network to seamlessly connect Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI networks; and it supports all major networking protocols.
MDS’s connectionless nature eliminates the need for carrier switches to establish a call connection between two points before data transmission. SMDS access devices pass 53 byte datagrams that include addressing information to a carrier switch that forwards the cells over any available path to their destination. Data travels over the least congested routes in an SMDS network, providing faster transmission, security, and greater flexibility to add or drop network sites.
Between 200 and 500 customers in North America are
using the service. In Europe and the Pacific Rim, service is just beginning
to be deployed in about 16 countries. Internationally, SMDS is sometimes
referred to as CBDS (Connectionless Broadband Data Service).
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is an emerging technology for both local area and wide area networks for simultaneous transmission of voice, data, images, and video. Broadband ISDN is a set of technical standards and services based on ATM technology, defined by the ITU-TSS standards organisation. ATM operates at speeds from 1.544 Mbps to 622 Mbps. In ATM, data is packaged into 53 byte cells, of which 5 bytes are used for header information. The 53 byte cell size is selected to provide effective performance for all types of traffic over a wide range of broadband speeds.
ATM has some of the advantages of narrow-band BRI
and PRI ISDN, with the significant added advantage of almost unlimited
transmission speeds. However, many details of the ATM standard implementation
are still evolving, and ATM WAN service is not yet widely available.
xDSL services are point-to-point public network access technologies that allow multiple forms of data, voice, and video to be carried over twisted-pair copper wire on the local loop between a network service provider’s central office and the customer site. xDSL is expected to have a significant impact in the next three years by supporting high-speed Internet/intranet access, online services, video-on-demand, TV signal delivery, interactive entertainment, and voice transmissions to enterprise, small office, home office, and, ultimately, consumer markets. The major advantage of high-speed xDSL services is that they can all be supported on ordinary copper telephone lines already installed in most commercial and residential buildings.
ADSL technology is asymmetric: it allows more bandwidth
downstream — from an NSP’s central office to the customer site — than upstream
from the subscriber to the central office. This makes ADSL ideal for Internet/intranet
surfing, video-on-demand, and remote local area network (LAN) access, because
users of these applications typically download much more information than
they send. Downstream, ADSL supports speeds between 1.5 and 8 Mbps; upstream,
the rate is between 16 and 640 Kbps. ADSL can provide 1.54 Mbps transmission
rates at distances of up to 18,000 feet over one wire pair. Optimal speeds
of 6 to 8 Mbps can be achieved at distances of 10,000 to 12,000 feet using
standard 24-gauge wire.
Support for Heterogeneous Environments
There are threats of an implementation problem brought on by non-standards components, proprietary and limited development environment. An open, flexible architecture is important in order to provide a platform for all developers to build open and inter-operable systems as well as leveraging at the existing systems already invested.
Emerging technology and advances in networking and Internet/Web technology have inspired a new network-centric computing model. A flexible architecture that provides a cross-platform, standards-based environment for developing and deploying network-centric applications is highly desirable. This architecture must recognise the increasing importance of Web servers, database servers, and application servers working together to enhance communication and deliver a wide array of information on demand to the desktop.
Recommendation: The
Sabah electronic government initiative needs to look into an open and common
software architecture for developing, deploying and managing multi-tier,
web-enabled applications yet be able to provide integration to legacy and
client-server systems. The real challenge is to seamlessly integrate existing
systems with new Web and object technologies, creating operational, decision
support, Intranet, and electronic commerce solutions that are needed to
address inter-agencies and general public requirement on government information
and services. To address these challenges, the solution is to embrace the
open, flexible architecture for a network society. The Sabah electronic
government initiative needs an architecture that is open and based on de
facto standards.
Object-oriented technology also provides a new DBMS paradigm — the object oriented database management system (OODBMS) — based on the object model.
The future trends for databases focus on DBMSs based on a hybrid of the relational and object models. The hybrid of the two, or known as object relational database, may extend the relational model to support aspects of the object model such as complex data types (for example, voice and image) and encapsulation (the packaging of an object’s data and processes). The object relational database may also extend the object model to support aspects of the relational model such as Structured Query Language (SQL).
Recommendation: More
and more applications, particularly Web applications, are incorporating
more complex data types such as audio, video and images in addition to
text. The increase demand for object capabilities is the growing requirement
to store complex data models and business rules. The Sabah electronic government
initiative should select a database technology that can extend the relational
model and the SQL language to incorporate complex data types with object
model. The database must have complete support for the object data model
with classes, multiple inheritances, non-normal form data, methods stored
in the database and associated with classes, etc.
Object management provides uniform rules for retaining, naming, and setting the security of objects. Objects are software components that consist of properties (data types, attributes) and methods (functions, procedures). An object manager tracks the creation and use of objects and manages the global namespace. The namespace includes all named objects in the local computer environment. The object namespace is organised in a hierarchical manner.
The industry has standardised on two object models, namely CORBA and COM/DCOM. CORBA is OMG’s (Object Management Group) distributed object model, which is the mechanism that allows objects to communicate between different operating environments. The other model is Microsoft’s distributed model, DCOM, a network aware implementation of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). Object bridges are being introduced to allow DCOM to work seamlessly with CORBA.
Recommendation: The
Sabah electronic government initiative should standardise on both CORBA
and DCOM through the implementation of object bridges. Use object management
services to communicate between different architectures. Use object bridges
to allow objects to interoperate seamlessly between CORBA and DCOM.
Object request broker (ORB) technology facilitates or brokers the communication between client processes and server objects. Server objects are server processes and data that have been encapsulated into an object architecture.
Most ORB implementations provide both static and dynamic APIs that clients use to communicate with server objects. The static interface uses an Interface Definition Language (IDL) and precompiler to generate the necessary interface code between the client and server in a manner similar to RPC technology. The dynamic interface uses an API to establish communication with a server object in a manner similar to message-passing technology.
The two leading object models requires a bridge to assure that both ActiveX based application systems (using DCOM) can interface to CORBA systems. This bridge is being developed by several vendors to promote interoperability between the two.
Recommendation: The
Sabah electronic government initiative should choose the object model and
bridges that best suits their portability, performance and legacy integration
requirements.