A Brief Survey of Event-based Middleware

Tao Wang, Wenbo Xu Jianli He, Rang Chen, Weinan Gu

School of Information Technology System Software Engineering Centre
Jiangnan University Tongji University
Wuxi, China, 214122 Shanghai, China, 200092
e-mail: [email protected][email protected] e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract-The event-based middleware is well adapted to communication properties. The partner in event-based
develop the adaptive application for the dynamic large-scale systems includes subscribers and publisher. Subscribers
distributed computing environment and is getting more and express their interest in an event, or a pattern of events.
more popular in both the academy and the industry due to its Messages related to the event generated by a publisher are
asynchronous, one-to-many and loosely-coupled push asynchronously propagated to all subscribers that registered
communication properties. This paper combs the concepts and the given event. The attraction of event-based system lies in
architecture of event-based middleware. We briefly present
the full decoupling in time, space, and synchronization
five influential event-based research results, and explore the
between publishers and subscribers [3], space decoupling
research efforts and core contents. Our research results that
means that the interacting parties do not need to know each
show the paradigm is also valuable for developing general­
other's identities, time decoupling refers to the interacting
purpose applications are also introduced from the perspective
parties need not be active at the same time when they need to
of architecture, implementation and application.
be participating in the interaction, and synchronization
Keywords-event-based middleware; adaptive middleware decoupling means that the interacting parties don't block
architecture; GUI system implementaion each other's activity in the course of exchanging messages.
On the other hand, comparing to asynchronous push,
synchronous poll has following limitations [4]: synchronous
I. INTRODUCTION
method invocation is insufficient for reactive environments;
With the development of communication technologies Too-frequent polling burdens the system and too-infrequent
and computers, all kinds of computers are gradually utilized polling delays the communication.
to the people's living and working space. At the same time, Firstly, this paper combs the concepts and architecture of
some new computing paradigms are emerging, such as event-based middleware. Then, we briefly present five
pervasive computing and cloud computing. These computing influential event-based research results, and explore the
paradigms have the common natures that involve thousands research efforts and core contents. Lastly, our research
of entities whose location and behavior may greatly vary results are also introduced from the perspective of
throughout the life-time of the system. The middleware architecture, implementation and application.
sitting between the networking operating system and
industry-specific applications is to solve the heterogeneity II. ARCHITECTURE AND CONCEPTS
and distribution problems by offering distributed system Events are occurrences that are localized in time and
services that have standard programming interfaces and space, such as the invocation of a program, the modification
protocols [1]. While, many existing middleware do not of a file, the change of a participant's state, or the sending of
provide adequate support to meet the highly dynamic message [5, 6]. Messages are information emitted by some
distributed computing demands. Tree results about the partner in order to communicate an event. Fig. 1 describes
limitations of many existing middleware are summarized by the abstract architecture of event-based systems. This
[2]: many existing distributed systems, such as distributed paradigm usually called "publish/subscribe" according to the
file systems and remote procedure call, cause great loss in names of the two basic operations that initiate the
service quality and failure resilience due to its hiding communication. Although many references name the
distribution and masking remote resources as local resources; architecture as many-to-many communication model, we call
Composing distributed applications through programmatic it one-to-many model from the publishers and subscribers
interfaces leads to a tight coupling between major application perspective where the messages published by one publisher
components, so that the system's extensibility and scalability can be received by many subscribers. The publisher and
is restricted in; distributed object systems that encapsulate subscriber are autonomous entities that perform application­
both data and functionality within objects go against the specific tasks. An event is generated by a publisher and the
sharing, searching, and filtering of data. messages related to the event are emitted by the publisher.
The event-based middleware is well adapted to develop Event broker provides storage and management ability for
the adaptive application for the dynamic large-scale subscriptions and efficient delivery of events. Event broker is
distributed computing environment and is getting more and a neutral mediator between publishers and subscribers. Such
more popular in both the academy and the industry due to its an event broker waits for the occurrence of an event, receives
asynchronous, one-to-many and loosely-coupled push event publisher's messages, and delivers them to those

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subscribers that have explicitly declared their interest in filtering, quality of service, and a lightweight form of typed
receiving it. The event broker plays a key role in the loosely­ and structured events.
coupled system characteristics. The CEA addresses the emerging need for asynchronous
Since standard interfaces are important to middleware communication in multimedia and sensor-rich application in
platform, the event-based middleware should at least provide the early 90s. "The CEA supports asynchronous operation by
four basic operations. The subscriber who needn't know the means of events, event classes, and event occurrences as
event publishers' identities register their interest in events by object instances [10]". The event architecture includes event
a subscribeO operation on the event broker. The subscription sources, sinks and event mediators. Event filtering based on
information remains only stored in the event broker and the parameter templates happens at the event sources to reduce
event publisher needn't keep those information. The communication overhead. The tight coupling between event
symmetric operation unsubscribeO applies for terminating a sources and sinks is decoupled by event mediators. The CEA
subscription. When a event occurs, a publisher calls a provides a language and composition operators for
publishO operation to convey the messages related to the specifying composite events and use stream semantics to
event to the event broker. Once receives messages from model event arrival from the different sources.
publisher, the event broker call the notifyO operation to JEDI [II] is an object-oriented infrastructure that
propagate the event occurrence information to all relevant supports the development and operation of event-based
subscribers. systems. A system consists of active objects and event
dispatchers, the former publish or subscribe to events, and
publisher publisher publisher
the later route events. JEDI provides the centralized and
distributed implementations of the event dispatcher. The
Publish Publish Publish distributed version organizes event dispatchers in a tree
structure. The tree is built dynamically as a core-based tree
.-__��_____________L-__________ �!�__� [12]. The core named a group leader make a global broadcast
Event Broker when it presents. The system also supports mobile
I computing by offering the moveOut and moveIn operations.
JEDI chose to guarantee only a particular form of partial
Subscribe/ Subscribe/
Notify Notify Notify ordering among events as far as preservation of event
unsubscribe unsubscribe
ordering is concerned.
Siena [13, 14] is one of the first implementations of an
subscriber sUbsc r� Internet-scale event notification service developed at the
University of Colorado. Siena focuses on the balances
Figure I. Abstract architecture of event-based system between expressiveness and scalability, and explores
content-based routing in a wide-area network. A set of event
brokers cooperating with each other form a network-wide
Ill. RESEARCH RESULTS
event service. Siena supports several network topologies
Reference [7] proposes a comprehensive framework for consisting of multiple brokers, including hierarchical, acyclic
the construction of large-scale, event-based software systems peer-to-peer, and general peer-to-peer topologies. Event
for the Internet, in order to captures event-based systems' publishers and subscribers are clients that first need to
design dimensions. The framework comprises seven models: connect to an event broker in the network of brokers.
an object model, an event model, a naming model, an Although Siena is a promising approach for a large-scale
observation model, a time model, a notification model and a middleware, there exist some problems that should be
resource model. This section does not touch in detail every resolved, including [14]: lacks support for type-checking; the
aspects of this framework, but briefly present the main topology of the overlay network of event brokers is static;
research results. Based on the achievements, the recent the scalability is limited in some case.
research areas in event-based systems include mobility Hermes [15, 16] is a distributed event-based middleware
support, dynamic and peer-to-peer systems, formal modeling platform. To handle dynamic large-scale environments,
and security. Hermes uses peer-to-peer techniques based on an overlay
CORBA is an object-oriented middleware architecture network called Pan that supports a variant of the
designed by the OMG, the largest consortium in the advertisement semantics. The features of the underlying
computing industry. The CORBA Event Service [8] is overlay system for message routing, scalability, and
centered on the event channel, which maintains a contact improved fault-tolerance are especially emphasized. The
between publishers and subscriber in a decoupled fashion. routing algorithms use rendezvous points to reduce routing
The communication among publishers and subscribers can state. Hermes places particular emphasis on programming
be both in the pull and in the push model. While, the language integration through following a type- and attribute­
asynchronous communication has the substantial overhead based publish/subscribe model.
for event delivery and no event filtering is supported. The In this section, we briefly present the CORBA event
CORBA Notification Service[9] try to overcome the service, CEA, JEDI, Siena and Hermes. There are some
shortcomings of the Event Service by providing event other influential event-based systems such as Elvin, Rebeca
and Gryphon etc. The interested reader refers to [17].

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 IV . OUR ApPROACHES include lots of server component object, each owning a
service broker. Server object provides his clients with the
Armed with the event-based features, we have developed
ability to express their interest in an event, in order to be
an adaptive middleware platform. Differing from the
notified subsequently of inner state change. The broker
middleware mentioned above, the platform is general
records all active subscriptions of registered clients. When an
purpose for developing adaptive application.
event happens, it would be asynchronously propagated by
A. Architecture service broker to all subscribers that registered interest in that
Fig. 2 illustrates the platform architecture. The given event.
architecture [18] consists of reflection meta-level and In our architecture, events are produced by component
application level. Meta-level provides the system supports objects and consumed by any interested parties. Event and
for developing adaptive application, consisting of three messages type are defined in component description
independent models, namely the interface model, the language (CDL), and the data object propagating between
assembly model and the perception model. The meta-level partners is self-description type. CDL plays three important
interface model encapsulates reusable component in the form roles: (1) defines event type and checks grammars; (2) binds
of binary code and exposes interfaces of the component to its component object with event broker; (3) generators
clients. The interface model separates application from automatically application programming interfaces.
reusable components that make the reusable components The clients of a component object register their interest in
dynamically loadable and replaceable, which is very events by calling a SubscribeTypeO operation on the server
important for developing adaptive application. The assembly object. This subscription information remains stored in the
meta-model classifies components and separate the event service broker, until the symmetric operation
identifiable units of system functionality from the user UnsubscribeTypeO is invoked. Each subscription has a
viewpoint from the whole system functionality. These handler parameter responding to event notification. To
functional units can be encapsulated into feature component generate an event, the server object calls a PublishTypeO
class, and a running object can dynamically aggregate operation. The event broker propagates the event to all
feature class object. Furthermore, allowing for component relevant subscribers through a NotifyTypeO operation.
evolution by itself, the assembly model allows component Asynchronous notification immediately returns to server
classes extending. Based on event-based technologies, the object's control flow and doesn't care about the execution of
perception meta-model serves for the data exchange between event handler function. Then, synchronous notification
objects and provides execution environments for running blocks the server object before client object' handler has
applications. finished. Each event support an information space associated
with an event schema. Event filtering reduces the number of
I
�� �p
Application base-level
events from the server object to his clients by matching
Relation �_ base l __ J APP events against a template. Filtering can be done at the event
database r ,"��k source. When an event filter is necessary, a function
associated with a template is invoked before the event
Sensor
eng .
I Device control I
I I ' .
PresentatlOn I notification is emitted by service broker.

I
device -� me
C. Application

Interface model I Assembly model T Perception model

To provide an execution environment for running
applications, we define a new component type named applet.
An applet component object is a stateless event processor,
Meta-data access
consisting of event queue, event scheduler and a number of
Meta-data application-specific server components objects.
Meta-level
An application corresponding to an applet component,
usually including some graphic user interface (GUI)
Figure 2
.
Adaptive middleware architecture components and application data related to persistent state.
Fig. 3 shows the GUI system implementation and the
Separation of concern is not particularly novel for interaction between graphic element and application. Events
software practitioners. The middleware platform especially may be generated by clock or input devices, such as mouse
contributes to the strict separation of concern between or keyboard. The kernel thread collects the events produced
application and presentation. The presentation transforms the by peripherals and stores these events in the event queue.
application's state into a perceivable (i.e., graphical and The graphic element form is parent window of most of the
audible) representation at application base-level. The relation other graphic elements, such as the button and menu. When
database stores application persistent states. the form object is instantiated in an application, it generates a
thread that shares the event queue and dispatches events. The
B. Implementation ojperception model
event scheduler loops continuously, processing events in the
The perception model addresses data-sharing between the application queue that stores different events coming from
server component object and his clients. Applications usually server objects.

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 Application

Device Kernel -+----+- Dispatch notification

event event Event queue Form Event
message
collection -+-------1- thread object scheduler
thread

Other graphic
element
object

Figure 3. GUI system implementation

symposium on the foundations of Software Engineering. ACM Press,

V. CONCLUSIONS New York, NY, 1997, pp. 344-360.
(8) OMG. CORBA:Event Service, Version 1.0. Specification, Object
This paper presents the event-based middleware that are
management Group(OMG), March 1995.
well adapted to develop the adaptive application for the
(9) OMG. CORBA:Notification Service, Version 1.0.1. Specification,
dynamic large-scale distributed computing environment. Our Object Management Group(OMG), August 2002.
approaches are introduced. Our platform is general-purpose, (10) J. Bacon, K. Moody, J. Bates, R. Hayton, C Ma, A. McNeil, O.
and builds on components-based, reflection and event-driven Seidel, and M. Spiteri, "Generic support for distributed applications,"
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