Pattern-based design of a service-oriented middleware for remote object federations

Abstract

Service-oriented middleware architectures should enable the rapid realization of loosely coupled services. Unfortunately, existing technologies used for service-oriented middleware architectures, such as Web services, P2P systems, coordination and cooperation technologies, and spontaneous networking, do not fully support all requirements in the realm of loosely coupled business services yet. Typical problems that arise in many business domains are for instance missing central control, complex cooperation models, complex lookup models, or issues regarding dynamic deployment. We used a pattern-based approach to identify the well working solutions in the different technologies for loosely coupled services. Then we reused this design knowledge in our concept for a service-oriented middleware. This concept is centered around a controlled environment, called a federation. Each remote object (a peer service) is controlled in one or more federations, but within this environment peers can collaborate in a simple-to-use, loosely coupled, and ad hoc style of communication. A semantic lookup service is used to let the peers publish rich metadata about themselves to their fellow peers.