Differences from XCAT-SP

The xbook architecture differs from the XCAT-SP in that it utilizes a commodity web portal framework; this gives it a modular design and also user management (i.e., a multi-user portal). Furthermore the xbook management is handled completely outside of the portal. One advantage of our this is that the client is not constrained to be a portal request only; for example, we can now also provide command-line clients (see Section 3.3.1).