Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Conference contribution/Paper › peer-review
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Conference contribution/Paper › peer-review
}
TY - GEN
T1 - The Role of Ontologies in Emergent Middleware: Supporting Interoperability in Complex Distributed Systems
AU - Blair, Gordon
AU - Bennaceur, Amel
AU - Georgantas, Nikolaos
AU - Grace, Paul
AU - Issarny, Valerie
AU - Nundloll-Ramdhany, Vatsala
AU - Paolucci, Massimo
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - Interoperability is a fundamental problem in distributed systems, and an increasingly difficult problem given the level of heterogeneity and dynamism exhibited by contemporary systems. While progress has been made, we argue that complexity is now at a level such that existing approaches are inadequate and that a major re-think is required to identify principles and associated techniques to achieve this central property of distributed systems. In this paper, we postulate that emergent middleware is the right way forward; emergent middleware is a dynamically generated distributed system infrastructure for the current operating environment and context. In particular, we focus on the key role of ontologies in supporting this process and in providing underlying meaning and associated reasoning capabilities to allow the right run-time choices to be made. The paper presents the Connect middleware architecture as an example of emergent middleware and highlights the role of ontologies as a cross-cutting concern throughout this architecture. Two experiments are described as initial evidence of the potential role of ontologies in middleware. Important remaining challenges are also documented.
AB - Interoperability is a fundamental problem in distributed systems, and an increasingly difficult problem given the level of heterogeneity and dynamism exhibited by contemporary systems. While progress has been made, we argue that complexity is now at a level such that existing approaches are inadequate and that a major re-think is required to identify principles and associated techniques to achieve this central property of distributed systems. In this paper, we postulate that emergent middleware is the right way forward; emergent middleware is a dynamically generated distributed system infrastructure for the current operating environment and context. In particular, we focus on the key role of ontologies in supporting this process and in providing underlying meaning and associated reasoning capabilities to allow the right run-time choices to be made. The paper presents the Connect middleware architecture as an example of emergent middleware and highlights the role of ontologies as a cross-cutting concern throughout this architecture. Two experiments are described as initial evidence of the potential role of ontologies in middleware. Important remaining challenges are also documented.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=83755196801&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-25821-3_21
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-25821-3_21
M3 - Conference contribution/Paper
AN - SCOPUS:83755196801
SN - 978-3-642-25820-6
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science
SP - 410
EP - 430
BT - Proceedings of ACM/IFIP/USENIX 12th International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2011)
A2 - Kon, Fabio
A2 - Kermarrec, Anne-Marie
PB - Springer Verlag
CY - Berlin
T2 - ACM/IFIP/USENIX 12th International Middleware Conference
Y2 - 12 December 2011 through 16 December 2011
ER -