Middleware and the Grid CS 786301 Fall 2004 Middleware Challenges Ahead Kurt Geihs

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Middleware and the Grid CS 7863-01 Fall
2004Middleware Challenges AheadKurt Geihs

• Stéphane Airiau
• Mathematical and Computer Sciences Department
• University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

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Introduction

• Survey paper to motivate/justify the need of
  research in middleware.
• Current middleware solution will not address
  future problems.
• ? Given the trend, the author identifies areas
  that will need to be researched to provide
  appropriate solutions

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Foundation

• Given the current and emerging technologies, the
  author foresees insufficiencies in current
  middleware solutions
• Mobile computing
• Ubiquitous computing
• Distributed computing, cooperation of the
  businesses needing cooperation at the software
  level.

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Main contributions

• Show the shortcomings of the current approaches
  (client server, RPC and ROI are dinosaur)
• Present areas that requires research, and survey
  the field when possible

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Weakness

• I do not like the structure of the paper, I feel
  lost because some ideas are coming back for
  different things there is nothing to unify the
  vision, at the end, I wonder what it is going to
  look like.
• ? ?Grid vision would help
• examples may not be relevant the way things are
  done may radically change.

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Organization of the paper

• Can anybody justify the structure?
• Changing environment
• Programming models
• Architecture
• Dynamic Configuration

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Future work

• It might be interesting to write the same paper
  but using the Grid vision as central point. I
  guess same challenges will be there, but it would
  give an overall vision that would give clearer
  motivation.
• Explore more the role of the intermediaries
  (which can be agent) and define what would be
  needed to implement an ultimate intermediary
• Understand what is needed
• Understand what is possible
• Making decision based upon user preferences and
  system state (possibly distribute the work, ask
  other entities)
• Get the results back together and send it to the
  user

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1) Changing environment

• Enterprise application integration many
  applications must interact on data within or
  outside the enterprise, with other
  enterprise/systems.
• Internet application new demands.
• Quality of service Qos can be integrated/taken
  into account by the middleware. but no solution
  yet
• Nomadic mobility being able to use computing
  resource anytime and anywhere idea of the grid
  computing. here stress on the mobility and the
  location awareness
• Ubiquitous computing limited resource,
  scalability issues in size and diversity raise
  lots of new problems.

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2)Programming Models

• client-server old dinosaur. pull and push
  models. no longer adequate. Plus P2P
• asynchronous interaction RPC and ROI dinosaurs.
  Corba provides some solution. SOAP is a proposed
  solution for internet application. Event based
  middleware is another solution (why special
  case?). P2P is difficult to implement.
• shared memory invocation -oriented Vs shared
  meory - share a space to communicate or share
  data or objects. Linda? Can be attractive for
  data intensive cooperation application. In the
  case of mobile computing, it raises lots of
  challenging question about data correctness.
• Mobile code and mobile agents flexible and
  adaptive. can reduce communication cost (ex
  client-server). Problem of programming language
  (I may not agree).

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3)Architecture

• Distributing transparency this is the goal. one
  problem is what is sufficient to publish without
  having to describe all that is behind (ex in a
  very heterogeneous environment, you may want to
  know what kind of system you are talking to in
  order to foresee problems, QoS ...)
• Layering strict layering may no longer be
  possible. And is it still necessary? Why do we
  need to bother?
• Monolithic architecture needs for light weight
  solutions. customizable middleware architectures
  (?) ? composability and customization into
  middleware in response to QoS and ubiquitous
  computing.

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4)Dynamic Configuration

• disconnect operationproblem with interrupted
  connection aimed to save resources. How to treat
  them.
• Adaptive applications adapt to current resource.
  resource/power aware.
• Ad hoc organization scaling up, self
  organization... Jini.
• Intermediaries creates need for intermediaries?
  security, transactions, reliability