Design aspects of a database for remote laboratory management

This paper describes the design of a database which is used to manage the remote laboratory RLAB. RLAB allows users from all over the world to access a set of real world physical models, to perform experiments by interactively working with them in a realtime environment, and to download the resulting data to their own computer system for further processing. The only requirement for the user's computer is an internet browser. RLAB was originally developed at Cologne University of Applied Sciences (CUAS) in Germany; it uses NI LabVIEW to perform the interfacing to the real world models as well as to interact with users and the database. The RLAB infrastructure has been ported to a mechanical laboratory site at University of North Florida (UNF), Jacksonville, during the past two years and is now used in its engineering curriculum, thereby offering access to some further real world models and gaining synergy from an international cooperation. To properly run such remote laboratory several aspects need to be considered. New users need to be registered at the system. The availability of experiments needs to be managed. For interactive work with one of the experiments, time slots need to be reserved in advance, and the attempt to access the experiments must be verified against the reservations. The experiments' parameter settings as well as results data must be kept to be retrievable afterwards, etc. This paper collects requirements from a set of use cases around RLAB. It then groups the requirements, proposes a data model, and describes the implementation using a relational database system. Furthermore some issues are discussed when extending the laboratory by further models and/or experiments, and the paper explains how this is taken care of by the RLAB approach. These considerations and results may help institutions to create an appropriate data management architecture when establishing some own remotely accessible experimentation sites.