A survey on service-oriented middleware for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are used for many applications such as environmental monitoring, infrastructure security, healthcare applications, and traffic control. The design and development of such applications must address many challenges dictated by WSN characteristics on one hand and the targeted applications on the other. One of the emerging approaches used for relaxing these challenges is using service-oriented middleware (SOM). Service-oriented computing, in general, aims to make services available and easily accessible through standardized models and protocols without having to worry about the underlying infrastructures, development models, or implementation details. SOM could play an important role in facilitating the design, development, and implementation of service-oriented systems. This will help achieve interoperability, loose coupling, and heterogeneity support. Furthermore, SOM approaches will provision non-functional requirements like scalability, reliability, flexibility, and Quality of Service (QoS) assurance. This paper surveys the current work in SOM and the trends and challenges to be addressed when designing and developing these solutions for WSN.     

支持服务行为和质量的面向服务软件开发

面向服务的软件开发方法减少了开发应用程序的时间和复杂度。当前面向服务架构中的服务注册和发现主要关注于服务的接口描述和静态属性，却较少考虑服务行为和服务质量。对服务行为即外部可见的操作序列的忽视，可能导致服务产生运行时的异常和错误；忽视服务质量即其运行时的质量信息，则可能导致系统运行的低效。本文提出了一种扩展的面向服务的软件开发过程，探宄服务交互过程中其行为一致和质量匹配。在面向服务的组件模型OSGi平台上，采用动态AOP技术，设计了一种支持服务行为和服务质量的中间件系统。该系统不但保证服务发现的调用一致性和服务替换的观察一致性，而且支持对服务运行时操作行为的检测和服务质量信息的收集，从而保证选择最佳的服务实现，提高应用系统的运行效率。     

Service discovery 101

A key aspect of the service-oriented architecture approach for middleware is that services advertise themselves using directory or lookup services so that prospective clients can find them. The service location and discovery abstractions required to support this are not much different from those we use to conduct business with other people. As a result, we can gain insights into how distributed service discovery systems work by comparing them to everyday human-oriented service discovery approaches. Given that service discovery depends on discovery services, how does an application actually find a discovery service?.     

Multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems

Enterprises need to be responsive to meet dynamic businesses and requirements. Service-oriented architecture and Web services can improve e-Business systems to be integrated and flexible. This paper proposes a multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems. The platform provides engineers/consultants with three views, i.e., business view, process view, and service view to support service-oriented software engineering, top-down business design and bottom-up service composite and development. The views are kept consistent through model-driven translation mechanisms. The platform employs three models, i.e., service meta-model, process model and business model to implement the translation. On the platform, business and technical consultants/engineers can use the views designated for their roles to collaborate for a service-oriented e-Business system based at the distributed sites of, e.g., IT vendors and their clients. The collaboration is featured with visual development and rapid demonstration. Comparingly, most of the mainstream development environments focus on object-oriented application development other than service-oriented business process modeling. The platform has been developed and deployed in an innovation centre to be evaluated by visiting customers.     

服务计算环境下一种基于机器学习的负载预测方法研究

随着计算机技术的迅速发展，分布式应用的规模迅速增加，越来越多的软件系统开始采用面向服务的体系结构SOA。为了提高SOA的可靠性和可扩展性，一种有效的方式就是提供服务副本，并通过基于中间件的负载平衡服务在不同的服务副本之间平衡负载。通过使用中间件，我们可以满足当前的面向服务应用对于性能、可扩展性和可用性的需求。然而，我们必须保证对于负载的计算具有一定的预测性以避免负载峰值的影响。对于复杂的面向服务应用来说，负载峰值意味着系统可能在短时间内具有极高的负载，而在大多数时间内负载较为平稳，从而因为负载取样的延时性导致系统过载而响应时间增加、总体吞吐量也受到影响。因此，为了降低响应时间，以及在负载频繁波动的情况下也能有效地利用服务副本，我们基于中间件为自适应和灵活的负载平衡机制的需求提出并实现了一种基于机器学习的预测机制。     

Combining heterogeneous service technologies for building an Internet of Things middleware

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that allows ordinary objects to be uniquely identified by “smart tags” which are also capable of storing small quantities of data. The term Internet of Things was originated from a vision strongly coupled with supply-chain concerns and RFID tagged objects. However the idea of such Internet of Things has evolved in a wider sense, referring now to a ubiquitous object society combining RFID, sensor networks and pervasive computing technologies. This scenario involves different requirements such as heterogeneity and dynamicity of objects, sensors, applications and protocols as well as the need for allowing the dynamic evolution of such applications. These issues seemed to be easily addressed if the principles of service-oriented computing (SOC), like loose coupling and heterogeneity, are used for constructing such architectures and applications. In this paper we underline what benefits SOC can offer to constructing a middleware for the Internet of Things. These concepts have been applied in a service-oriented middleware that tries to leverage the existing Internet of Things architectural concepts by using SOC principles in order to bring more flexibility and dynamicity. We describe the approaches used in that middleware and the lessons learned from that experience. This middleware was initially tested on an application for tracking and monitoring supply-chain objects, and later extended to target wider application domains that are also described in this paper. The project described here has become part of the OW2 AspireRFID open-source project.     

Model-driven engineering of middleware-based ubiquitous services

Supporting the execution of service-oriented applications over ubiquitous networks specifically calls for a service-oriented middleware (SOM), which effectively enables ubiquitous networking while benefiting from the diversity and richness of the networking infrastructure. However, developing ubiquitous applications that exploit the specific features offered by a SOM might be a time-consuming task, which demands a deep knowledge spanning from the application domain concepts down to the underlying middleware technicalities. In this paper, first we present the model-driven development process underpinning ubiSOAP, a SOM for the ubiquitous networking domain. Then, based on the domain concepts defined by the conceptual model of ubiSOAP, its architecture and its technicalities, we propose a domain-specific environment, called ubiDSE, that aids the development of applications that exploits the ubiSOAP features, from design to implementation. ubiDSE allows developers to focus on the main behavior of the modeled systems, rather than on complex details inherent to ubiquitous environments. As part of ubiDSE, specific tools are provided to automatically generate skeleton code for service-oriented applications to be executed on ubiSOAP-enabled devices, hence facilitating the exploitation of ubiSOAP by developers.     

Service-oriented applications for environmental models: Reusable geospatial services

Environmental modelling often requires a long iterative process of sourcing, reformatting, analyzing, and introducing various types of data into the model. Much of the data to be analyzed are geospatial data—digital terrain models (DTM), river basin boundaries, snow cover from satellite imagery, etc.—and so the modelling workflow typically involves the use of multiple desktop GIS and remote sensing software packages, with limited compatibility among them. Recent advances in service-oriented architectures (SOA) are allowing users to migrate from dedicated desktop solutions to on-line, loosely coupled, and standards-based services which accept source data, process them, and pass results as basic parameters to other intermediate services and/or then to the main model, which also may be made available on-line. This contribution presents a service-oriented application that addresses the issues of data accessibility and service interoperability for environmental models. Key model capabilities are implemented as geospatial services, which are combined to form complex services, and may be reused in other similar contexts. This work was carried out under the auspices of the AWARE project funded by the European programme Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). We show results of the service-oriented application applied to alpine runoff models, including the use of geospatial services facilitating discovery, access, processing and visualization of geospatial data in a distributed manner.     

Configurable Middleware for Distributed Real-Time Systems with Aperiodic and Periodic Tasks

Different distributed real-time systems (DRS) must handle aperiodic and periodic events under diverse sets of requirements. While existing middleware such as Real-Time CORBA has shown promise as a platform for distributed systems with time constraints, it lacks flexible configuration mechanisms needed to manage end-to-end timing easily for a wide range of different DRS with both aperiodic and periodic events. The primary contribution of this work is the design, implementation, and performance evaluation of the first configurable component middleware services for admission control and load balancing of aperiodic and periodic event handling in DRS. Empirical results demonstrate the need for, and the effectiveness of, our configurable component middleware approach in supporting different applications with aperiodic and periodic events, and providing a flexible software platform for DRS with end-to-end timing constraints.     

Event based choreography

An important feature of the service-oriented approach is the ability to aggregate, through programmable coordination patterns, the activities involved in service interactions. Two different approaches can be adopted to tackle service coordination: orchestration and choreography. In this paper, we introduce a formal methodology to handle coordination among services from the perspective of a global observer, in the spirit of choreography models. In particular, we address the problem of verifying compliance and consistency between the design of service interactions and the choreography constraints.     

A model-driven framework for enterprise service management

With a steady pace of adoption of service-oriented architecture, enterprises have made significant progresses in implementing various kinds of Web services and converting existing applications to service-oriented architecture. As a significant number of services have been put into actual use, many service-oriented enterprises are faced with the problem of how to manage these services efficiently. In this paper, we propose a model-driven framework for a more efficient management of these services. In this framework, the creation and maintenance of enterprise integration solutions are modeled by flows, finite state machines (FSMs), role-based access control (RBAC) among other formal systems models as well as appropriate decision models. For instance, each enterprise integration solution would be modeled as composite services that can be described by respective flow, FSM and RBAC models. These solution models can then be stored, and later retrieved for the execution of these composite services. Furthermore, formal systems and decision models are also used to maintain and update these service-oriented solutions to improve the efficiency and quality of service management by taking advantage of the underlying service-oriented architecture.     

A service-oriented city portal framework and collaborative development platform

Cities are being equipped with multiple information systems to provide public services for city officials, officers, citizens, and tourists. There have been concerns with efficient service implementation and provision, e.g., data islands and function overlaps between systems and applications. Service-oriented portals are efficient at facilitating information sharing and collaborative work between city systems and users. The goal of this research is to make cities responsive, agile and to provide composite services efficiently and cost efficiently. A service-oriented framework for city portals is proposed to design, integrate and streamline city systems and applications. A model driven collaborative development platform of the proposed framework was developed for service-oriented digital portals. The architecture and implementation issues of the platform are discussed. The service identification policies are discussed within the framework. A case study has been developed and evaluated on the platform to provide a composite service, i.e., a traffic search service on a city portal.     

Component meets service: what does the mongrel look like?

Computing with services has attracted much attention as a promising approach for developing distributed applications. The approach is often advertised as being superior to distributed component-based software engineering (CBSE), because it provides a higher potential to bridge heterogeneous IT application and infrastructure landscapes. It facilitates cross-institutional cooperation, lets services run over all kinds of ubiquitous communication infrastructure, scales better and simplifies legacy software integration. If this were absolutely true, there would be no reason for a consortium of major vendors of service and Java EE technology to come up with a new specification, called service component architecture (SCA). This emerging standard tries to leverage service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles with component-based software development techniques. In this article we discuss some commonalities and fundamental differences of the CBS and SOA worlds. We illustrate SCA briefly using snippets of an ongoing case study based on an e-university federation. Then we elaborate on the qualities and current deficits of SCA in the light of CBSE findings and related works.     

一种分布式异构环境中语义模式匹配通信研究

在分布式系统中,随着不同标准中间件的不断出现,提供了一种新的计算方式,并实现了组件间的通信.由于Web服务在分布式异构环境中解决了应用程序的整合问题,导致基于互联网的中间件技术得到了迅速发展.因此在基于分布式组件开发的应用系统中有必要建立一个组件间协调处理机制.本文中我们设计了一种基于Web的协调服务,这个服务实现了组件间基于语义模式匹配的通信功能.     

面向服务工作流的分布式事务管理研究

Web服务与工作流技术的结合有助于提高企业应用系统的可扩展性和互操作能力。该文提出了基于协调策略的面向服务工作流的业务流程管理的思想，介绍了面向服务工作流的分布式事务管理框架的总体结构和设计原理，为面向服务工作流的研究提供了一种新思路。     

面向方面的中间件

中间件应用领域的不断拓展,给中间件体系结构的设计带来了困难,中间件的体系结构必须在通用性与专用性之间寻找平衡。传统的中间件体系结构产生这些问题的一个基本原因是:使用垂直分解过程获得的软件分解模型不能同时模块化共存的正交设计需求。论述了针对专门领域的面向方面中间件开发的三种工具:AspectIX和QuO处理QoS关注点,DIL从功能代码中分离协议实现。在建造一个中间件系统时,使用这些工具可以获得较好的模块性、可配置性和代码的演化性。     

Efficient and reliable service selection for heterogeneous distributed software systems

The service-oriented paradigm is emerging as a new approach to heterogeneous distributed software systems composed of services accessed locally or remotely by middleware technology. How to select the optimal composited service from a set of functionally equivalent services with different quality of service (QoS) attributes has become an active focus of research in the service community. However, existing middleware solutions or approaches are inefficient as they search all solution spaces. More importantly, they inherently neglect QoS uncertainty owing to the dynamic network environment. In this paper, based on a service composition middleware framework, we propose an efficient and reliable service selection approach that attempts to select the best reliable composited service by filtering low-reliability services through the computation of QoS uncertainty. The approach first employs information theory and probability theory to abandon high-QoS-uncertainty services and downsize the solution space. A reliability fitness function is then designed to select the best reliable service for composited services. We experimented with real-world and synthetic datasets and compared our approach with other approaches. Our results show that our approach is not only fast, but also finds more reliable composited services.     

RISE: A general simulation interoperability middleware container

In recent years, new services on the Internet have enabled global cooperation; in particular, the Web has enabled new distributed simulation technology. Much research has been devoted to develop middleware interoperability methods on the Web. However, most existing methods have constraints in the structural rules that are placed on the design of middleware interoperability methods. For example, such constraints make it difficult to enhance interoperability via decoupling systems implementations and design, which is essential in open computing networks, as in the case of the Web. In order to achieve such objectives we present the RISE (RESTful Interoperability Simulation Environment) middleware. This all-purpose WS-based distributed simulation middleware decouples design and implementation while allowing composition scalability and dynamicity. Furthermore, it supports experiment-oriented frameworks and has the ability to put Web 2.0 services in the simulation loop. RISE is the first existing middleware to achieve such objectives, and the first to employ RESTful Web-services. We present the foundations for meeting the above objectives, and the distinct characteristics of RISE from existing Web-based approaches.     

Visual Grid Workflow in Triana

In this paper, we describe the graphical abstractions for Grids and services that have been implemented within the Triana problem solving environment. We provide an overview of the ways in which Triana interacts with services (e.g., Web and P2P services) and then how we interact with core Grid components, such as resource managers and data management systems through the extensive use of the GridLab GAT interface. We describe in detail the GAT philosophy and implementation and then show how the various GAT primitives can be represented in an intuitive fashion within a Triana workflow. This approach, which we refer to as the Visual GAT, differs substantially from other approaches because we do not tie our implementation to any specific underlying Grid middleware technologies; rather, we base our implementation on application level requirements and model such primitives from a user’s perspective by hiding as much complexity as possible without undermining the core capabilities required. We provide a use case to demonstrate the Visual GAT implementation and show how legacy applications can seamlessly be distributed and integrated in a dynamic fashion within complex data-driven workflow scenarios.