X-window based user interface and network communications for an image network

Abstract

Recent advances in the field of high speed computer network have opened many new applications. One such application is the transfer of color image data between geographically distributed color image databases. ImageNet is a distributed color image database system with multiple database nodes and user workstation linked by a communication network. The work presented here is the design and implementation of user-interface and communication software for a workstation. The system was emulated on the Ethernet in Computer Engineering Research Laboratory. Dedicated servers running at a database node simulate database operations. Experimental comparison between RPC with UDP and RPC with TCP was made and the use of RPC/UDP for image-transfer is investigated. The X-window user interface is user friendly. It enables users to retrieve image lists and images from remote workstations. The use of wscrawl for the remote consultation enables more than two users to participate in remote consultation from different workstations.