Coulson, G. and Blair, Gordon S. and Grace, P. and Porter, B. and Cai, W. and Cooper, C. and Duce, D. and Younas, M. and Li, W. and Sagar, M. (2005) Open Overlay Support for the Divergent Grid. In: The 4th UK E-Science All Hands Meeting, 1900-01-01.
Abstract
The divergent Grid is characterized by heterogeneity. Applications will operate across different types of end-systems (e.g. from resource light sensor motes to supercomputers) that are interconnected by a wide range of network types. Furthermore, these applications will require middleware functionality beyond the traditional “interaction paradigms” of RPC and message passing. For example, we are exploring both a wildfire and environmental informatics scenario that involve device communication better supported by: publish-subscribe, group multicast, tuple spaces and other interaction types. In this paper, we propose a middleware approach to meeting these emerging needs; this approach is based upon two fundamental properties: i) a set of extensible interaction types are underpinned by purpose built overlay network implementations, and ii) the middleware is structured using a lightweight run-time component model that enables appropriate profiles to be configured on a wide rage of device types, and facilitates run-time reconfiguration (as required for reasons of adaptation to dynamic environments).