Middleware Projects

The aim of this project is to provide a reference Java messaging system based on the MPI standard. The implementation follows a layered architecture based on an idea of device drivers . The idea is analogous to UNIX device drivers. Earlier efforts for building a Java messaging systems have typically followed either the JNI approach, or the pure Java approach. On commodity platform like Fast Ethernet, advances in JVM technology now enable networking applications written in Java to rival their C counterparts. On the other hand, improvements in specialized networking hardware have continued, cutting down the communication costs to a couple of microseconds. Keeping both in mind, the key issue at present is not to debate the JNI approach versus the pure Java approach, but to provide a flexible mechanism for applications to swap communication protocols.

Slogger (Semantic Log-Analyser) is a framework which enables the analysis and evaluation of distributed applications and infrastructures. It uses semantic web technologies to assist in the unification of heterogeneous data. The existing research in the area of log analysis has tended to concentrate on specific types of system, or particular system instances; this work is different because it attempts to unify dissimilar hardware and software records from systems that have no knowledge of each other (a common scenario in the Grid). Slogger provides a layer of semantic inference and annotation between otherwise irreconcilable data.

The objective of the Tycho project is to design and develop a reference implementation of a Java-based system that includes both a scalable virtual registry and a wide-area messaging infrastructure. We believe that such a system will ease the development of applications and allow developers concentrate on their domain of expertise and avoid the need to also know the details about the process of registration/discovery and message passing.