A Generic Communication Middleware Architecture for Distributed Application and Service Messaging

Abstract

The contribution of this paper is a Generic Communication Middleware (GCM) concept and architecture definition for application messaging in heterogeneous distributed computing environments. The GCM is targeted to facilitate the development of distributed applications into heterogeneous computing environments, with special attention given to applicability for both wireless and wired communication and variable capability devices. The requirements are gathered from the literature and initial prototype implementations. The GCM concept and architecture are presented in the paper. The novelty of the GCM middleware is that it provides both application and transport independent messaging system architecture that can be widely applied in different applications and services as middleware. Functional validation of the GCM concept and architecture is provided via prototypes overviewed and empirically analyzed in the paper.

Adaptability Evaluation at Software Architecture Level

“…In the case implementation, the architectural styles and patterns suitable for the case purposes have been selected as follows: (1) the Layers Pattern [47] and the Microkernel Pattern [47] to depict the layers of the architectures, (2) General Communication Middleware (GCM) [53] to solve the adaptive middleware issues, (3) a component-based architecture paradigm [54] to depict the architectures, and (4) connectors [55] to depict the relationships between the architecture components. Furthermore, the technological approaches described in Table 6 have been exploited and used in the case implementation.…”

“…For example, GCM (Fig. (6)) consists of two main parts: message structure and middleware for processing the messages providing a communication abstraction for application messaging [53]. The main rationale for introducing the communication abstraction for application messaging is to enhance adaptability and facilitate development of the application.…”

“…GCM is designed for processing GCM messages. It facilitates the development of the distributed applications by providing to adopt middleware communication service removing the need for application specific communication implementations [53]. The difference between GCM and other known communication middleware solutions is that GCM constitutes a transport-independent communication abstraction, making it widely reusable in a variety of applications [53].…”

“…GCM solution of the target system software architecture has been message oriented and GCM messages have been defined in object oriented fashion. GCM message structure has been dynamic consisting of message body (GCM_Message) and message elements (GCM_MessageElement) [53]. New message elements for different kind of data have been introduced to GCM message structure by extending GCM_MessageElement -class [53].…”

“…GCM message structure has been dynamic consisting of message body (GCM_Message) and message elements (GCM_MessageElement) [53]. New message elements for different kind of data have been introduced to GCM message structure by extending GCM_MessageElement -class [53]. GCM messages use identifiers of the target system software for addressing.…”