A Comparison and Mapping of Data Distribution Service and High-Level Architecture

The OMG Data-Distribution Service (DDS) is an emerging specification for publish-subscribe data- distribution systems. The purpose of the specification is to provide a common application-level interface that clearly defines the data-distribution service. The specification describes the service using UML, thus providing a platform- independent model that can then be mapped into a variety of concrete platforms and programming languages. DDS attempts to unify the common practice of several existing implementations enumerating and providing formal definitions for the QoS (Quality of Service) settings that can be used to configure the service. In this paper we provide a comparative overview of the data distribution service with respect to high-level architecture. We describe the equivalent terminology and concepts, and highlight the key similarities and differences in the areas of declaration management, object management, data distribution management, ownership management, federation management, and time management. We explore the architectural mapping between HLA and DDS. We develop an outline for translating from one model to the other, and examine the needed supporting transformations and assumptions. We conclude with remarks and observations on building applications that can utilize both HLA and DDS technologies.