Open ORB - Next Generation Middleware
Project Overview
Middleware has emerged as an important architectural component in modern distributed systems largely because it offers a high-level, platform-independent programming model that helps mask distribution problems. Examples of key middleware platforms include DCE, CORBA, DCOM, .NET, and the Java-based series of technologies, including RMI, Jini, and EJB. Traditionally, developers have deployed such platforms, in areas such as banking and finance to overcome heterogeneity and support the integration of legacy systems. More recently, however, developers have applied middleware technologies in a wider range of areas, including the safety-critical, embedded, and real-time systems. This analysis also applies to the key areas of the GRID and e-Science. It is now becoming apparent that middleware technologies cannot respond to such diverse requirements or technical challenges because of the limitations of the black-box philosophy maintained by developers of most existing middleware platforms. In particular, existing middleware platforms offer fixed services to their users; it is typically impossible to view or alter the implementation of these services. Inevitably, the architecture of this platform then represents a compromise design that features, for example, general-purpose protocols and associated management strategies. It is not possible to specialize platforms to meet the needs of more specific target domains. The Open ORB project at Lancaster is an ongoing activity looking at middleware that is i) more configurable than existing platforms, and ii) dynamically re-configurable in response to changes in the environment or application requirements. This is achieved through a combination of component-based technologies and reflection. Our previous work has developed an architecture and associated prototypes of this technology, and we are currently interested in applying the Open ORB concepts to areas as diverse as the GRID/ e-Science applications, mobile and ubiquitous computing, co-operative virtual environments and open network architectures.
Objectives
The overall aim of this work is to specialise our reflective middleware technology for use in the GRID, and to demonstrate this with a series of application demonstrators from other partners in the NW-GRID consortium. More specifically, the project has the following key objectives:
- To develop a reflective middleware architecture with the necessary features to support a wide-range of e-Science applications;
- To develop a proof-of-concept middleware platform as a partial implementation of this architecture;
- To focus specifically on advanced resource management features as required by the GRID, and how this might be accommodated within our overall (reflective)architecture;
- To evaluate the approach through a series of application experiments taken from fields such as experimental physics, environmental science and the social sciences.
This work complements the GRIDKIT project (above) by focusing on more long-term research.
Publications
G. Coulson, A ‘Possible Future’ for the Grid, Editorial article, Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience 19 (2007) 1879-1884. (available at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/geoff/Publications/CCPE06.pdf)
P. Grace, D. Hughes, B. Porter, G. Blair, G. Coulson, F. Taiani, Experiences with Open Overlays: A Middleware Approach to Network Heterogeneity, Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys’08), March 2008
M. Jakeman, D. Hughes, G. Coulson, K. Lee, S. Pink, Supporting IPv6 Interaction with Wireless Sensor Networks Using NP++, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems and Applications (WASA’08), Dallas, Texas, October 2008.
D. Hughes, N. Bencomo, G. Blair, G. Coulson, P. Grace, B. Porter, Exploiting Extreme Heterogeneity in a Flood Warning Scenario using the Open Overlays Middleware, demonstration abstract to be published in the international conference on Middleware (Middleware 2008), December 2008