Model-driven integration of federated event services in real-time component middleware

Rapid advances in hardware, networking technologies and software technologies, including standards-based optimized component middleware, has enabled the growth of component middleware-based complex, large-scale distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. These DRE systems found in different domains, such as avionics, telecommunications, defense, enterprise and healthcare, often use a publisher/subscriber communication paradigm, such as that provided by an event service. A federation of such event services provides a scalable solution to address the complex distribution challenges of DRE systems. By connecting event channels from different systems together a federated event service enables seamless and application-transparent interchange of event information across distribution boundaries.Although component middleware supports the creation of applications via composition of reusable and flexible software components, however, to deploy such systems effectively involves numerous challenges in integrating the various distributed components communicating via different event channels. Current state of the art in deploying a federation of event services for these component middleware-based DRE systems involves ad hoc techniques that are tedious and error-prone.This paper describes a novel scheme we have developed based on a model-based paradigm that resolves the challenges in configuring the federated event service. Our approach centers around the notion of the federated event service modeling language (FESML), which is a modeling tool we have developed to resolve the configuration and deployment challenges of federated event service for component middleware-based DRE systems.