Application Sub System

Chapter 8
• Multimedia Communication System is divided into two architectural
subsystem.
• Application Subsystem
Application
• Transport Subsystem Application
Presentation
Subsystem
Session

Transport
Transport
Network Subsystem
 Application Subsystem
• Collaborative Computing
• Known as Computer Supported Co-operative work (SSW).
• Tools for collaborative computing.
• Email
• Bulletin Board
• Text- base conferencing ( MS messenger)
• Desktop teleconferencing ( Net meeting)
• video teleconferencing
• these application can be classified using following properties.
• Time:
• there are two modes:
• Synchronous : Happens at the same time.
• Asynchronous: Do not happen at the same time.
• User Scale:
• it specifies whether a single user collaborated with another user or a group of
more then two users collaborate together.
• group may be:
• Static: Pre-determined members in group members does not change.
• Dynamic: Group members can join or leave the activity at any time.
• group may be Homogeneous-same characteristics or Heterogeneous-
different characteristics.
• control:
• can be centralized or distributed.
• centralized: main manager who controls the team and team reports
to him.
• Distributed: Every group members has control over his/her own tasks.
• Group Communication Architecture:
• Group communication Architecture consists of a support model, system model and
interface mode.
• group support model consists of group communication agents which may use
following of their collaboration.
• Group Rendezuous ( meeting at agreed time and place):
• a method for setting up collaborative group meetings and providing static and
dynamic information about groups and ongoing meetings.
• Shared application:
• Technique allowing replication of information to multiple user simultaneously.
• Conferencing:
• Synchronized tele-collaboration.
• often involves transmission of videos and audio.
• GC System Model:
• based on client-server model.
• client provide user interfaces for smooth interaction between group members and
the system.
• Server supply functions for accomplishing the group communication work, and each
server specialized in its own function.
• GC Interface Model:
• includes two kinds of protocols for exchanging information within GC support model.
• User presentation protocols.
• Group work management protocols.
• first one perform interaction among the clients as opening a conference,
closing a conference, dynamic joining and leaving of a meeting and floor
passing.
• second one specify the communication between the clients and the server.
Transport System
• Requirements:
• for the transmission of multimedia we need.
• significant Data throughput ( Maximum rate of production)
• Multimedia application often involve large amount of video and audio data.
• high data throughput is often required.
• fast data forwarding multimedia application often impose constraints end to
end delay.
• Multicasting-Multimedia data are sent to multiple destinations for data
sharing.
• we will examine existing transport protocols to see how they satisfy these
constraints.
Internet Transport Protocols
• TCP ( Transmission Control Protocols)
• Provide full-duplex end to end internet connection with reliable transmission.
• it is built on unreliable transmission protocols based on the following strategies:
• sequencing numbering
• Retransmission on timeout
• positive acknowledgement on reception of information.
• for multimedia applications:
• the positive acknowledgements causes heavy overhead.
• retransmission may cause the system to violate the deadlines.
• UDP ( User Datagram Protocol)
• an extension to IP that supports multiplexing and simple error detection( Checksumming)
• fast because there is no acknowledgement.
• Unreliable when the bandwidth is low.
• no guarantee when the bandwidth is low.
• No guarantee of the correction of the transmission.
• For multimedia application:
• pros: fast, low overhead
• cons: not reliable
• several extensions are proposed to increase the performance of both
UDP and TCP protocols so that layer group of application can use
them.
• large windows and time stamps are now draft standards.
• also selective acknowledgement might be take in.
Quality of service and resource management
• QOS ( Quality of Service ) is the description of measurement of the
over all performance of a service such as a telephone or computer
network, particularly the performance seen by the users of the
network
• ISO( International standard organization) define the parameters of the
services through notion of Qos.
Qos layering
• As the multimedia communication system consists of three layers"
application. system and devices, there is a need of QOS in each layer
• In the case of human used MCS may also require user QOS
specifications.
fig: QOS layered for MCS

Users

User QOS

Application

Application QOS

System Network QOS

Device QOS

MM devices Network
QOS Descriptions
• Application Qos Parameters includes :
• Media quality which includes media characteristics and their transmission
characteristics, such as end - to-end delay .
• Media Relation which specify the relations among media, such as media
conversion or inter / intra stream synchronization.
• System QOS Parameters :
• It describes requirements on the communication services and os services.
Both quantitative and qualitative criteria is considered- Quantitative include
• such as bits per second, number of errors, task processing time, PDU
size etc.
• Throughput,delay, response time, rate data corruption at system level
and task and buffer specification are also included in QOS
parameters.
• Qualitative criteria includes such as ordered delivery of data, error-
recovery mechanism, scheduling mechanism etc.
Network QOS
• IT specifies the requirement on network services. which is specified
in terms of:
• Network load:
• characterized through average/ minimal interarrival time.
• a packel size .
• Service time .
• Network performance
• - QOS parameters are latency, bandwidth, delay-Jitter etc.

• device QOS parameters typically specify timing and throughput

demands for media data units.
QOS parameters values and types of service.
• QOS parameter value determines types of service.
• type of service:
• Guaranteed service.
• Predictable service
• Best effort services
Resource
• Resource is a system entity required by tasks for manipulating data.
It's characteristics are:
• Active and Passive Resource
• Active Resources :CPU
• Passive resources :buffer
• Exclusives resource :speaker
• shared resource- bandwidth
• Single resource
• Multiple resource
Resource Management
• Why do we need Resource Management
• Limited capacity in digital distributed systems despite data compression and
usage of new technologies.
• Need adherence for processing of continuous data by every hardware and
software component along data path.
• competition for resource exists in an integrated multimedia system.
• The main goal of resource management is:
• To reserve and allocate resources
• To provide resources
• To adapt to resource changes during on-going multimedia data processing.
Trends in Collaborative Computing
• New application disciplines place new demands on the collaboration
infrastructure and new tele-services are emerging.
• Only conferencing and application sharing is not enough.
• Multimedia networked applications, such as tele-medicine, tele-working,
virtual collaborative space, distributed simulations and tele-action require
sophisticated handling at the level of an application subsystem.
• Future collaborative computing will incorporate a (possibly unknown)
number of people at geographically distributed sites, using a variety of
applications from different application domains.
• With the heterogeneity of collaborative multimedia applications,
interoperability issues need to be satisfied.
Simplification of Groupware Development
• The development process for groupware needs to be simplified
through re-usable components.
• Groupware should have a plug-and-play architecture .Also
collaborative development support during software engineering
should be at much higher level.
Shared Abstractions and Standard Interfaces
• Shared abstractions and standard interfaces need to be developed to
accommodate heterogeneity.
• The Rendezvous architecture from Bellcore provides already a partial
solution for graphical shared abstractions .
• The Rendezvous architecture is based on a centralized abstraction
that collects information common to all users into a single space.
• Each user has his/her own personal view to this information. There is
a link between each view and the abstraction.
• The links are responsible for maintaining consistency between each
view and the abstraction.
Trends in Transport Systems
• The trend in transport systems goes in two directions: one is the special-purpose
protocol approach, the other one is the general-purpose protocol approach
• The special-purpose protocol approach, also known as the Internet paradigm, is
to de. sign various special-purpose protocols on top of IP for different classes of
applications.
• An example is TCP as a special-purpose protocol for reliable data communication
UDP for unreliable data communication, and RTP for audio and video transport
• The general-purpose protocol approach is to provide a general set of services that
the user can pick and use.
• An example is XTP, where the user can select one-way. two-way or three-way
handshaking for connection setup and release, etc.
• It is hard to predict which paradigm is the right one for the future.
• More and more special application types are coming.
• Whether to keep designing and supporting growing protocols in a machine,
or use a general protocol to let user pick is a os their question to answer.
• Common desktop en A more realistic and flexible approach may be to
develop application-tailored protocols that are customized for specific
types of services, such as transferring voice, video, text and image data.
• In our opinion, the transport subsystems move more and more towards a
provision of several service classes .
• Therefore, a transport system may offer, for example, a class of guaranteed
services and a class of best-effort services.
• Within each service class, the services are customized through QOS
specification, and accordingly, services inside of the class are selected and
customized toward applications.
Multimedia Database Management System
• Multimedia Database Management System Multimedia Database systems
are database systems where, besides texts and other discrete data, audio
and video information will also be stored manipulated and retrieved.
• Multimedia Data
• It is not the conventional alphanumerical data
• It is a collection of:
• Text ,Image, Audi's or video.
• How Data is stored in MMDBMS
• The Multimedia data can be stored. in 3 parts:
• They are:
• Raw Data
• Registering Data
• Deseripive Data
• Row Data: unformatted Information content ie.pixels.
• Registering Data: Data necessary for interpretation & identification , format.
• Descriptive Data :Information about content and structure.
• In the case of Text.
• characters represents RAw data .
• Registering data describes the codling .
• Descriptive data include. data about layout structuring.
• Advantages
• optimized storage
• Efficient Access
• complex search is also possible
• transaction protected multiuser mode
• recovery
• In MMDBMs there are dilarent datatypes:
• Text
• Image
• Audio
• video
• Requirement of Multimedia Databases:
• Integration:
• Data items do not need to be duplicated for different programs invocation .
• Data independence .
• Separate the database and the management from the application programs.
• concurrency control.
• allows concurrent transactions
• Persistence:
• Data object can be saved and e-used by different transactions and program invocations.
• Privacy:
• Access and authorization control
• Integrity control :
• Ensures database consistency between transactions.
• Recovery
• Failures of transactions should not affect the persistent data storage.
• Query Support :
• Allows easy querying of multimedia data.
Characteristics of Multimedia DBMS
• Corresponding Storage Media
• Multimedia data must be stored managed according to the specific characteristics of the
available storage media .
• Storage media can be both computer integrated component and external devices.
• Descriptive Search Methods :
• A query of multimedia data should be based on descriptive , content- oriented search in the
for example, "The picture of the woman with a red scarf".
• This kind of Search relates to all media, including video and audio.
• Device - Independent Interface:
• Database application's interface should be device –independent
• Format - independent Interface:
• Database queries should be independent from the underlying media format meaning that
the interfaces should be format - independent.
• MDBMS device - independence and format independence allow for new storage
technologies to be used without changing the current multimedia database applications.
• View- specific and Simultaneous Data Acesss:
• The same multimedia data can be accessed through queries by several applications.
• Hence, consistent access to shared data can be implemented. bio 6.
• Management of large amounts of data:
• DBMS must be capable of handling & managing large amounts of data to satisfying
queries for individual relations among data or attributes al relations
• Relational Consistency of data management:
• Relations among data of one or different media must stay consistent corresponding
to their specification.
• Real-time data transfer:
• Read and write operations of continuous data must be done in real time.
• Long transactions:
• The performance of a transactions in a MDBMS means that transfer of a large
amount of data will take long time and must be done in a reliable fashion.
• an example of a long transactions is retrieval of movie.