The IMPACT Interoperability Framework - Workflows for OCR and beyond Better, faster, cheaper. Solutions of the IMPACT Centre of Competence and future challenges, The British Library, 24-25 October 2011, London, United Kingdom.

1. The IMPACT Interoperability Framework:
Workflows for OCR and beyond
Clemens Neudecker, KB National Library of the Netherlands
2nd IMPACT Conference, British Library, London 24/25 October 2011

2. Background
 > 20 individual software components for specific challenges
 Prototyping new algorithms, improving commercial solutions
 Different frameworks (C, C++, Java, etc.), platforms (Win/Linux)
 Extensible with 3rd party applications
 IMPACT Interoperability Framework (IIF)

3. Architecture
 Java
 Web Services
 Apache
 Taverna
Open Source available on https://github.com/impactcentre
Free Hackathon 14/15 November, University of Manchester
http://impact-mygrid-taverna-hackathon.wikispaces.com/

4. Integration
 Only requirement:
command line executable
 Generic command line wrapper
produces web service
 Web service exposed as
workflow module with
documentation
 Quick & easy integration:
developers can focus on their application and have to worry
less about integration = higher quality software

5. Workflows
 OCR workflow =
data pipeline
 Building blocks =
processing modules
(nodes)
 Integration =
interaction between
nodes (mashups)
 Collaboration with

7. Evaluation features
 Text comparison of result with ground truth,
using Levenshtein distance method
 Word evaluation (with reading order)
 Layout based comparison of result with ground truth,
using the Page Analysis And Ground Truth Elements Framework

8. Community
 Web2.0 style
workflow registry
 Ready-to-use and
documented resources
 Community of experts
 Sharing of experiments
and know how

9. Local client: Taverna Workbench
 Background:
BioSciences
 Developed and
maintained by
myGrid, UK
 Open source
 GUI for design and execution of web services & workflows

10. Remote client: Portal
 SOAP/REST API
 Remote execution of web services & workflows

11. Results Repository
Custom service for IMPACT:
 automatic storage of
workflow outputs and
provenance via WebDAV
 Fully interoperable,
since HTTP-based
 Configurable storage of
result sets
 Create reports using POI

12. Scalability
 Central ESB proxy
manages multiple
service copies
 Process parallelization,
Load distribution,
Fail over, Security
 Served >2M requests
 Throughput improvements of 94% with every additional instance
 Tested on Dutch Supercomputing Cloud (“Enlighten Your Research”)

13. Outlook
 Online service for testing/evaluation
 Specification & Guidelines
 Extending the scope:
Workflows for linguistic analysis: CLARIN
Workflows for preservation: SCAPE
 Even better scalability: Map/Reduce
 Supported by a community of developers & practitioners

15. xkcd.com/688
“Anyway, the thing about progress is
that is always seems greater than it really is.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
(quoting Johann Nestroy)