TY - GEN
T1 - The role of ontologies in emergent middleware
T2 - 12th ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference, Middleware 2011
AU - Blair, Gordon S.
AU - Bennaceur, Amel
AU - Georgantas, Nikolaos
AU - Grace, Paul
AU - Issarny, Valérie
AU - Nundloll, Vatsala
AU - Paolucci, Massimo
PY - 2011/12/23
Y1 - 2011/12/23
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.
KW - emergent middleware
KW - interoperability
KW - ontologies
KW - system-of- systems
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=83755196801&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-25821-3_21
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-25821-3_21
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-25821-3_21
M3 - Conference publication
AN - SCOPUS:83755196801
SN - 9783642258206
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 410
EP - 430
BT - Middleware 2011 - ACM/IFIP/USENIX 12th International Middleware Conference, Proceedings
PB - Springer
Y2 - 12 December 2011 through 16 December 2011
ER -