A middleware architecture for distributed systems management

This paper presents a middleware solution for global management of any kind of distributed system, such as networks of PCs/workstations, clusters or server farms. Our approach lies in an object-oriented software architecture that models all kind of management information using the common information model (CIM) developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The classes and attributes obtained after the modeling process are mapped to a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) repository. This paper discusses the key features of our middleware that allows that any element (physical, logical, device, user or system) can be managed using a network-oriented and topology-independent approach. A representative example of management domain illustrates the procedures followed to build management applications using our middleware architecture.     

A pluggable middleware architecture for developing context-aware mobile applications

The proliferation of powerful smartphone devices provides a great opportunity for context-aware mobile applications becoming mainstream. However, we argue that conventional software development techniques suffer because of the added complexity required for collecting and managing context information. This paper presents a component-based middleware architecture which facilitates the development and deployment of context-aware applications via reusable components. The main contribution of this approach is the combination of a development methodology with the middleware architecture, which together bring significant value to developers of context-aware applications. Further contributions include the following: The methodology utilizes separation of concerns, thus decreasing the developmental cost and improving the productivity. The design and implementation of context-aware applications are also eased via the use of reusable components, called context plug-ins. Finally, the middleware architecture facilitates the deployment and management of the context plug-ins in a resource-aware manner. The proposed methodology and middleware architecture are evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively.     

An architecture for extensible middleware platforms

This article presents a middleware platform architecture whose goals, motivated by the needs of a real‐world application, are the following: separation of functional and non‐functional code in applications, composition of non‐functional properties, and modularity and extensibility of the middleware platform itself. This architecture is inspired by the Enterprise Java Beans platform, and uses a new object composition model to separate and compose the non‐functional properties. In order to evaluate this architecture, we have implemented the JavaPod platform which we have used to implement a prototype of the application that motivated our goals. The results of these experiments show that our goals can indeed be achieved with our architecture. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sociotechnical architecture for online privacy

Users' concerns regarding privacy issues are lowering their trust in e-services and, thus, affecting the widespread adoption of online services. To increase users' perceived control over their privacy, the authors propose a novel e-privacy architecture.     

RFID中间件的结构设计

RFID中间件是介于前端读写器硬件模块与后端数据库和应用软件之间的重要环节,它是RFID应用部署运作的中枢。针对目前相关企业的需求,设计了一种面向服务体系（SOA）的实时系统的RFID中间件结构, 并给出了设备管理及询问器相应的UML类图结构,对RFID中间件中各组成部分的作用和构成作了详细地说明。通过对一个基于餐饮系统应用的测试表明,中间件可提高系统的可移植性,增强了系统的可维护性和可靠性。     

A middleware architecture for disseminating delay-constrained information in wireless sensor networks

Data dissemination is a process where information is transmitted towards different destinations. In order to prevent accidents, coordinate rescue operations and warn people about critical events, this process imposes end-to-end delay constraints. Accordingly, the delay from each source to each destination should be monitored. For this purpose, a middleware is required between the network and the applications, offering the tracking capabilities of disseminated information. In this paper, we propose a middleware architecture for disseminating delay-constrained information in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In order to evaluate the feasibility of such architecture, a proof of concept of a real scenario is implemented. For performance evaluation, the end-to-end delay and the percentage of success related to the disseminated information are analyzed. Such analysis reveals that the middleware offers a percentage of success close to 98%, which is highly superior to the success of individual resources, such as Short Message Services (SMS), emailing and twitter.     

BiSNET: A biologically-inspired middleware architecture for self-managing wireless sensor networks

This paper describes BiSNET (Biologically-inspired architecture for Sensor NETworks), a middleware architecture that addresses several key issues in multi-modal wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) such as autonomy, scalability, adaptability, self-healing and simplicity. Based on the observation that various biological systems have developed mechanisms to overcome these issues, BiSNET follows certain biological principles such as decentralization, food gathering/storage and natural selection to design MWSN applications. In BiSNET, each application consists of multiple software agents, which operate on the BiSNET middleware platform in individual sensor nodes, and each agent exploits certain biologically-inspired mechanisms such as energy exchange, pheromone emission, replication, migration and death. This is analogous to a bee colony (application) consisting of multiple bees (agents). This paper describes the biologically-inspired mechanisms in BiSNET, and evaluates their impacts on the autonomy, scalability, adaptability, self-healing and simplicity of MWSNs. Simulation results show that BiSNET allows sensor nodes (agents and platforms) to be scalable with respect to network size, autonomously adapt their sleep periods for power efficiency and responsiveness of data collection, adaptively aggregate data from different types of sensor nodes, and collectively self-heal (i.e., detect and eliminate) false positive sensor data. The BiSNET platform is implemented simple in its design and lightweight in its memory footprint.     

Interactive middleware architecture for lifelog based context awareness

Due to the development of IT convergence, a wide variety of information is being produced and distributed rapidly in digital form. Lifelog based context awareness is a technology that provides a service automatically based on perceived situational information in ubiquitous environments. To offer customized services to users, the technology of acquiring lifelog based context information in real time is the most important consideration. We propose the interactive middleware architecture for lifelog based context awareness in distributed and ubiquitous environments. Conventional middleware to support ubiquitous environments stores and manages the situational information and service content acquired by centralized storage or a DBMS. Centralized situational information and service content management may impede the autonomy of mobile nodes and the interoperation between different middle software. The proposed method designs a system that can distribute and manage situational information in mobile nodes using mobile devices in distributed and ubiquitous environments and share the service content between interactive middleware through publication. The application system designed in this study was used in a scenario providing situational perception based mobile service and proved to be useful.     

SPAD: A distributed middleware architecture for QoS enhanced alternate path discovery

In the next generation Internet, the network will evolve from a plain communication medium into one that provides endless services to the users. These services will be composed of multiple cooperative distributed application elements. We name these services overlay applications. The cooperative application elements within an overlay application will build a dynamic communication mesh, namely an overlay association. The Quality of Service (QoS) perceived by the users of an overlay application greatly depends on the QoS experienced on the communication paths of the corresponding overlay association. In this paper, we present super-peer alternate path discovery (SPAD), a distributed middleware architecture that aims at providing enhanced QoS between end-points within an overlay association. To achieve this goal, SPAD provides a complete scheme to discover and utilize composite alternate end-to-end paths with better QoS than the path given by the default IP routing mechanisms.     

Multi-agent based middleware for protecting privacy in IPTV content recommender services

This work presents our efforts to design an agent based middleware that enables the end-users to use IPTV content recommender services without revealing their sensitive preference data to the service provider or any third party involved in this process. The proposed middleware (called AMPR) preserves users’ privacy when using the recommender service and permits private sharing of data among different users in the network. The proposed solution relies on a distributed multi-agent architecture involving local agents running on the end-user set up box to implement a two stage concealment process based on user role in order to conceal the local preference data of end-users when they decide to participate in recommendation process. Moreover, AMPR allows the end-users to use P3P policies exchange language (APPEL) for specifying their privacy preferences for the data extracted from their profiles, while the recommender service uses platform for privacy preferences (P3P) policies for specifying their data usage practices. AMPR executes the first stage locally at the end user side but the second stage is done at remote nodes that can be donated by multiple non-colluding end users that we will call super-peers Elmisery and Botvich (2011a, b, c); or third parties mash-up service Elmisery A, Botvich (2011a, b). Participants submit their locally obfuscated profiles anonymously to their local super-peer who collect and mix these preference data from multiple participants. The super-peer invokes AMPR to perform global perturbation process on the aggregated preference data to ensure a complete concealment of user’s profiles. Then, it anonymously submits these aggregated profiles to a third party content recommender service to generate referrals without breaching participants’ privacy. In this paper, we also provide an IPTV network scenario and experimentation results. Our results and analysis shows that our two-stage concealment process not only protect the users’ privacy, but also can maintain the recommendation accuracy     

个性化时空数据隐私保护

智能移动终端的普及导致收集的时空数据中个人位置隐私、签到数据隐私、轨迹隐私等敏感信息容易泄露,且当前研究分别针对上述隐私泄露单独提出保护技术,而没有面向用户给出防止上述隐私泄露的个性化时空数据隐私保护方法.针对这个问题,提出一种面向时空数据的个性化隐私保护模型(p,q,ε)-匿名和基于该模型的个性化时空数据隐私保护(P...     

ID-Services: an RFID middleware architecture for mobile applications

The use of RFID middleware to support application development for and integration of RFID hardware into information systems has become quite common in RFID applications where reader devices remain stationary, which currently represents the largest part of all RFID applications in use. Another field for applying RFID technology which is offering a huge set of novel possibilities and applications are mobile applications, where readers are no longer fixed. In order to address the specific issues of mobile RFID-enabled applications and to support developers in rapid application development, we present ID-Services, an architecture for an RFID middleware that is designed to support mobile applications. The ID-Services approach has been used to implement MoVIS (Mobile Visitor Information System), a mobile application which allows museum visitors to request individually adapted multimedia information about exhibits in an intuitive way.     

A comprehensive and holistic knowledge model for cloud privacy protection

The Journal of Supercomputing - Although Cloud computing is gaining popularity by supporting data analysis in an outsourced and cost-effective way, it brings serious privacy issues when sending the...     

一种鲁棒性强的无线传感器网络位置隐私保护方案

传统无线传感器网络（WSNs）位置隐私保护方案难以解决安全性与网络能耗之间的均衡,为了提高网络隐私信息的安全性,提出一种鲁棒性强的无线传感器网络位置隐私保护方案.首先通过增加伪源节点和伪汇聚节点防止攻击者获得关键节点的位置信息;然后采用伪汇聚节点分组、概率丢弃冗余数据包降低网络资源消耗;最后在Matlab 2012平台下进行仿真对比实验.结果表明：该方案可以提高网络攻击事件检测率,降低网络时延,有效地保护源节点和汇聚节点的位置隐私.     

Runtime software architecture based on reflective middleware

Copyright by Science in China Press 2004 Since its first literate identification and discussion[1], software architecture (SA) has become an important subfield of software engineering, receiving increasing attention from both academic and industrial communities. SA describes the gross structure of a software system with a collection of components, connectors and constraints[2]. In gen-eral, SA acts as a bridge between requirements and implementation and provides a blue-print for system cons…     

Wireless location privacy protection

After more than two decades of hype, computing and communication technologies are finally converging. Java-enabled cell phones run a host of powerful applications including mobile Internet access, while many notebook computers offer high-speed wireless connectivity as a standard feature. The big decision when purchasing a PDA is whether to get integrated cellular service or Wi-Fi capability. Location-based services are emerging as the next killer app in personal wireless devices, but there are few safeguards on location privacy. In fact, the demand for improved public safety is pushing regulation in the opposite direction. Today, when a person reports an emergency from a landline phone by dialing 911 in the United States or 112 in Europe, the system displays the caller's phone number and address to the dispatcher. The US Federal Communications Commission has mandated that, by December 2005, all cellular carriers be able to identify the location of emergency callers using mobile phones to within 50 to 100 meters. However, how cellular carriers and other businesses will use this capability remains open to question. The article looks at some of the areas this capability affects, including: privacy risks; economic damages; location-based spam; intermittent connectivity; user interfaces; network privacy; and privacy protection.     

面向移动社交网络的位置隐私保护方法

移动社交网络为人们的生活带来了极大的便利,但用户在享受这些服务带来便利的同时,个人位置隐私受到了严重威胁。首先对用户位置隐私保护需求进行了形式化描述,继而针对用户的敏感兴趣点泄露问题,提出了一种情景感知的隐私保护方法。该方法将位置信息、社交关系、个人信息引入到知识构建算法中以计算兴趣点间的相关性,并利用该相关性及时空情景实时判断发布当前位置是否会泄露用户隐私,进而实现了隐私保护与服务可用性间的平衡。最后通过仿真实验验证了该方法的有效性。     

对混合属性数据表可行的差分隐私保护方法

为加强隐私保护和提高数据可用性,提出一种可对混合属性数据表执行差分隐私的数据保护方法。该方法首先采用ICMD（insensitive clustering for mixed data）聚类算法对数据集进行聚类匿名,然后在此基础上进行
-差分隐私保护。ICMD聚类算法对数据表中的分类属性和数值属性采用不同方法计算距离和质心,并引入全序函数以满足执行差分隐私的要求。通过聚类,实现了将查询敏感度由单条数据向组数据的分化,降低了信息损失和信息披露的风险。最后实验结果表明了该方法的有效性。     

具有隐私保护的安全电子交易协议

电子交易的普及在给用户带来便利的同时,其在交易支付中所暴露出的隐私保护和安全性问题也受到不同程度的挑战。针对此问题,提出一个安全的电子交易协议。协议中,优化后的签密算法可保证交易的安全性;同时支付服务商具有去匿名性功能,可以在保护用户隐私的基础上进行追责。经性能分析,本协议在提高通信性能的基础上,满足消息的机密性和不可否认性、购买者的匿名性和可追踪性以及电子交易的公平性。