During this project I implemented a Java GUI and a server written in C which allow the demonstration and usage of a parallel equation solver which itself can run only on multiprocessor sun machines, through any ordinary, Java-enabled web browser.

I dont't know much about solving equation systems with Gröbner bases. My task was to bring the whole system online. This was done using a classical three-tier approach. On the one side there is the graphical user interface written in Java. It communicates through sockets with an application server written in C. Because of security reasons in the Java implementation of the most web browsers, the application server must run on the same host like the web server from which the applet has been loaded from.
But since the application server only remotly calls the actual equation solver and returns the results he computed, this is no limitation. In fact this indirection allows us to to transparently change the host which does the real work, or even alternate between different hosts of one pool.

The three GUI's can be viewed at the following URL's respectively :

System for Parallel Gröbner Bases computation

System for Walk Gröbner Basis conversion

System for Implicitization by the Gröbner Walk

For first time users, I recommand loading a small example from the corresponding directory (e.g. 'PoSSo/2mat3' for the Parallel Gröbner Bases computation, 'Walk/arnborg7.grev' for the Gröbner Walk and 'Implicit/bsp1' for the Implicitization) and then press the 'Start' button. After some time the result of the computation should appear in the result window. If you receive a message saying that the server can not be started, please contact me.
If everything works fine, you can play with the parameters or type in your own examples.

The implementation of the GUI and the application server is documented in a set of slides(only german, .ps format(1166 kb) or .ps.gz format(69 kb)). Two of this slides, which contain figures explaining the Java client and the C server are available in english as well (.ps format(121 kb) or .ps.gz format(35 kb)). Finally, at the ACM 1998 Workshop on Java for High-Performance Network Computing there was presented a paper ( Parallel computer algebra software as a web component) which contains some aspects of this work.