Where is is middleware

Middleware is all about integration. Middleware has existed in various forms for many years in systems such as the IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS), numerous message queuing systems such as IBM's MQ Series, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM), Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and the latest rage, Web services. Virtually every form of application, programming language, operating system, and hardware has been a target of an integration effort involving these middleware systems or their cousins. Middleware is everywhere     

基于金融交易的CICS中间件应用设计

论述了中间件在客户／服务器软件结构开发中的必要性，针对金融交易的联机事物特性，阐明了以CICS中间件为平台的3层软件体系结构应用设计思路。通过CICS客户端和服务器端的程序设计来调用CICS交易中间件的各种功能，避免了直接对通讯编程，方便地实现了程序间的参数传递，简化了应用程序设计，保障了应用程序数据的一致性和完整性。     

CICS中间件技术在金融系统中的应用研究

中间件技术目前在金融交易系统中的应用日益普及,但是如何提高金融交易服务器的负荷能力和系统资源的利用率,成为金融系统面临的一个重要问题.通过多次的实践摸索之后,针对这些问题,介绍了以CICS中间件为平台的三层软件体系结构,并结合实践经验,给出了多系统CICS客户端的一种配置方法,介绍了联机交易和批处理交易服务器端程序设计的框架.实践结果表明这是解决上述问题行之有效的一种方法.     

CICS在银行系统中的应用

通过讲述中间件在联机事务处理中的应用来说明中间件在银行系统中的应用情况。交易中间件是专门应用于联机事务处理的一类中间件,而CICS正是一种交易中间件。文中对CICS交易中间件的基本组成和功能进行了说明,并分析了联机事务处理的基本特性及方式,主要选择了三种联机事务处理方式来说明,并分别分析了每一种联机交易处理方式的特点,最终选择了能更好保证事务完整性的交易中间件来实现联机交易的处理。     

Applying Formal Specification to Software Development in Industry

This paper reports experience gained in applying formal specification techniques to an existing transaction processing system. The system is the IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS) and the work has concentrated on specifying a number of modules of the CICS application programmer's interface.     

Shaping the Internet: the dynamics

Earlier, the author discussed five components of an Internet architecture (middleware; user interface; delivery system; application; and data). He completes that schema by describing the four dynamics: user processes, software development; data management; and system management. The distinction between components and dynamics can be illuminated by an analogy: if the components are features in a landscape, the dynamics are forces like wind and water currents that shape them. The components and dynamics are inseparable, and their interactions comprise the environment in which the Internet “lives”. Instead of trying to suggest the next level of detail for the four dynamics, the author gives examples of how the dynamics influence the evolution of the components and vice versa. The dynamics are susceptible to our influence (unlike the laws of gravity), so all of us have a hand in shaping the Internet by our choices as technology developers and users. The author looks at how the Internet components and dynamics affect one another     

Evaluation of a high‐volume,low‐latency market data processing system implemented with IBM middleware

A stock market data processing system that can handle high data volumes at low latencies is critical to market makers. Such systems play a critical role in algorithmic trading, risk analysis, market surveillance, and many other related areas. The current systems tend to use specialized software and custom processors. We show that such a system can be built with general‐purpose middleware and run on commodity hardware. The middleware we use is IBM System S which includes transport technology from IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging (LLM). Our performance evaluation consists of two parts. First, we determined the effectiveness of each system optimization that the hardware and software infrastructure makes available. These optimizations were implemented at all software levels—application, middleware, and operating system. Second, we evaluated our system on different hardware platforms. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CICS在银行联机事务处理中的研究

随着中国加入WTO,中国的银行面临的竞争越来越激烈。大型机技术与其它系统相比,在大规模数据处理上占有绝对优势。随着银行业务的扩大,银行联机事务量迅猛增加,业务与业务之间具有更加复杂的关系。CICS(Customer Information Control System)是IBM用于管理联机事务处理的最主要的处理平台,适用于有大量突发联机事件的系统。该文基于IBM大型机技术,分析归纳CICS的技术特点,对银行联机事务处理进行探讨。     

Specifying distributed CICS in Z: Accessing local and remote resources

The CICS/ESA Intercommunication Guide is a source of information about distributed CICS systems. Among other things, it describes how an application program running on one system can issue a command that will be shipped to a remote system. A resource manager located at the remote system will execute the command and ship back a response.This paper presents a formal specification of the above interaction between application programs and resource managers. Some familiarity with the Z specification language is assumed. The structure of the specification illustrates how it is possible to address separately, and later combine, different aspects of a complex system, including its distributed nature.IBM is a trademark of the International Business Machines Corporation.     

IBM's Deep Blue Chess grandmaster chips

The IBM Deep Blue supercomputer that defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 employed 480 custom chess chips. This article describes the design philosophy, general architecture, and performance of the chess chips, which provided most of Deep Blue's computational power     

Crossing the divide: architectural issues and the emergence of thestored program computer, 1935-1955

The rapid advance of computing technology since the 1940s has created an impression that all that happened in computing before then was somehow mere prologue to the real history. According to this popular notion, the computer age began with the invention of machines that computed at electronic speeds, that were capable of automatic sequence control with conditional branching, and that stored their programs internally. The classification of computing into “generations” with the “first” generation being those with vacuum tubes further reinforces this notion. The paper looks at some examples of machines built in the 1930s and 1940s that straddle both ages: machines that had some sort of sequence control, partially electronic counting circuits, or primitive branching capabilities. In particular, the author examines a few systems that reveal especially well the nature of this transition: the ensembles of punched card equipment used by L.J. Comrie (1932) and W. Eckert (1984) for scientific instead of business use; the “Aberdeen Relay Calculator” that IBM built for the US Army; and the “Card Programmed Calculator” that Northrop Aircraft invented for engineering applications that IBM later marketed     

基于网格中间件的统一检索

网格技术是近年来新兴的一个研究热点,它使互联网上所有资源实现全面共享与协同工作,将整个因特网整合为一个巨大的超级计算机,为用户提供"即连即用"的服务.本文详细介绍了网格中间件OGSA-DAI和OGDA-DQP,并针对目前图书馆期刊信息整合的现状,利用网格中间件技术对各种期刊数据库进行整合,即利用OGSA-DAI对期刊数据库进行封装,通过OGSA-DQP进行统一检索,解决了目前在异构数据库整合中基于界面整合自治性差、稳定性不好的特点.     

Implementing an analytic model for customer information control systems (CICS)

In most installations, it is important that response time consistently meets negotiated service levels for online, interactive systems. As a result, the capacity planning and performance management disciplines have become important functions to these installations. This paper discusses one of the tools used in capacity planning. Initial methods of capacity planning ranged from “seat of the pants” analysis to complex trending techniques. Because it is often necessary to take into account not only the growth pattern of various capacity indicators, but also the interrelationship of these indicators, analytic queuing models have become an accepted method of analysis in the computer measurement arena. The analytic queuing model discussed in this paper is a mathematic representation of the physical parts of a computer system. It is important to note that such an analytic model can only evaluate a finite number of elements or pieces of the system. As a result, when actual measured values are compared with those calculated by the model (the process of model validation) discrepancies can result because of elements that are not explicitly represented in the model. Many of the influences that are not represented by the mathematic model can be removed by tuning the system to remove bottlenecks. When using a model for capacity planning, it is assumed that the data used to develop the model are derived from a system that is “moderately tuned.” A moderately tuned system is one in which the majority of the bottlenecks or other influences not represented by the model have been removed. When the model is used to predict the responsiveness and throughput of the system into the future, it is assumed that any negative influences not represented in the model will be removed in a timely fashion. In this paper, we will review the impact of such tuning issues on attempts to validate the model against actual data. The analytic model discussed in this paper is for IBMs Customer Information Control System (CICS). The model was published in 1982 in the IBM Systems Journal. In the following sections, we will review the model that was presented in the IBM Systems Journal, present extensions required to implement the model for MVS systems, and discuss the aspects of CICS performance that are not represented by analytic models based on traditional SMF and RMF data.     

Performance testing a large finance application

The case study presented in the paper shows how a simple prototype can be used to verify, before production, that a system will perform at an acceptable level under realistic conditions. The study involves the first implementation of American Management System's Federal Financial System (FFS), a financial accounting application, in a customer information control system (CICS) DB2 environment running on a large IBM mainframe     

Sequential to parallel buffer refinement

This paper is intended to solve a particular problem related to the refinement of a shared sequential buffer into a parallel collection of buffers arising from a study on the IBM CICS project. Using the notion of cooperating refinement we show that the two systems are equivalent from the users' points of view (except with respect to efficiency). This is achieved by constructing an interleaving for each possible sequence of commands which access the buffer. The induction used in the proof is non-standard, and makes the problem harder than it would at first seem. Further we show that the interleaving cannot be done on the fly, showing that in some other sense, the parallel collection is indeed superior, as intuition suggests.This author was supported by the Esprit REX project     

Transaction processing using remote procedure calls (RPC) for a heterogeneous distributed clinical information system

The Johns Hopkins Hospital is developing a distributed clinical information system that integrates functionally several UNIX, IBM MVS/CICS and MUMPS computer systems. Distributed application development is accomplished by interprocess communications across Ethernet using remote procedure calls. The remote procedure call (RPC) protocol provides a standard approach to the development of distributed applications using the metaphor of a subroutine call. The Sun Microsystems RPC and XDR (external data representation) protocols have been implemented in these environments. The systems, the distributed model, RPC implementations and applications examples are discussed.     

Have we witnessed a real-life Turing Test?

Did Deep Blue ace the Turing Test? Did it do much more? It seems that the IBM creation not only beat the reigning chess World Champion Gary Kasparov, but also took a large step, in some people's eyes, toward true artificial intelligence. For AI professionals, a computer defeating a human in chess is probably neither surprising nor really significant. After all, they contend, chess can be described in terms of a nondeterministic alternating Turing machine. Despite the enormous number of possible positions and available moves, the task does not present a challenging theoretical AI problem of NP completeness. There are many well-developed AI strategies that limit the search for the best move to an analysis of the most promising positions. Therefore, the progress in logical and numerical methods of AI and a computer's computational speed and available memory made the computer's victory inevitable. Deep Blue's victory, then, was attributable to its ability to analyze 200 million positions per second and a refined algorithm that accounted for positional-in addition to material-advantage. In summary, most AI professionals conclude that the computer won by brute force, rather than a sophisticated or original strategy. What most AI experts have overlooked, though, is another aspect of the match, which may signify a milestone in the history of computer science: for the first time, a computer seems to have passed the Turing Test     

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.     

RFID中间件及其仓储管理的应用

现阶段RFID技术发展迅速，在物流仓储、商品防伪、交通运输、医疗卫生、国防军事等方面得到了广泛应用。但是由于将RFID设备与企业后端系统（如：SCM系统、ERP系统）之间的整合耗费不菲且技术复杂，制约了RFID技术的推广。近来RFID中间件的推出很好地解决了技术与成本这两方面问题，加速了RFID技术的推广使用。该文在介绍RFID（射频识别）技术的组成及其特点的基础上，研究了RFID中间件架构，并提出了一个基于IBM RFID中间件开发的仓储管理系统的设计方法。     

基于AOP和反射计算的动态自适应中间件

Internet为分布式应用提供了一种开放,动态的运行环境,为了使作为分布式应用主要基础设施的中间件能够支持运行时监测并调整系统的内部状态、结构和行为,能够根据运行过程中的环境变化对应用程序的属性和行为做相应的调整,结合使用AOP和反射计算技术的优点,并将AspectLua集成到中间件,中间件的应用配置信息用Lua编写,从而使得构造的中间件具有较好的自适应性。