Interoperability in Complex Distributed Systems

Gordon Blair (1) , Massimo Paolucci (2) , Paul Grace (1) , Nikolaos Georgantas (3)

1 Computing Department [Lancaster]
2 DOCOMO Euro-Labs
3 ARLES - Software architectures and distributed systems

Distributed systems are becoming more complex in terms of both the level of heterogeneity encountered coupled with a high level of dynamism of such systems. Taken together, this makes it very difficult to achieve the crucial property of interoperability that is enabling two arbitrary systems to work together relying only on their declared service specification. This chapter examines this issue of interoperability in considerable detail, looking initially at the problem space, and in particular the key barriers to interoperability, and then moving on to the solution space, focusing on research in the middleware and semantic interoperability communities. We argue that existing approaches are simply unable to meet the demands of the complex distributed systems of today and that the lack of integration between the work on middleware and semantic interoperability is a clear impediment to progress in this area. We outline a roadmap towards meeting the challenges of interoperability including the need for integration across these two communities, resulting in middleware solutions that are intrinsically based on semantic meaning. We also advocate a dynamic approach to interoperability based on the concept of emergent middleware.

Mots clés: Interoperability; complex distributed systems; heterogeneity; adaptive distributed systems; middleware; semantic interoperability

Domaines: Informatique ubiquitaire

Gordon Blair, Massimo Paolucci, Paul Grace, Nikolaos Georgantas. Interoperability in Complex Distributed Systems. Marco Bernardo and Valerie Issarny. 11th International School on Formal Methods for the Design of Computer, Communication and Software Systems: Connectors for Eternal Networked Software Systems, Springer, 2011. ⟨inria-00629057⟩