Deliverable 1 . 3 . 1 b : State - of - the - art of middleware technologies

SYNOPSIS This document contains a state-of-the-art survey of available middleware platforms for use in a telematics environment and evaluates their suitability for use in the practical prototyping work in the Amidst project. ii Document History DATE VERSION MODIFICATION 8 October 01 Initial outline of the deliverable. 1 December 02 Changed outline as discussed during November meeting. Added contribution from Dave/Gloria on CORBA. 03 Updates for the CORBA and DCOM part, and contributions and review from Val. 22 December 08 Edits by Val, submission to PMC for end of year as draft deliverable. 12 January 09 Edits by Maarten (amongst which references, abbreviations and fixing headers, pictures, captions, new pictures for 2.2). 27 January 10 New versions of section 3 (George/Nikolay) and section 2.2 (Gloria). Abstract This document presents a state-of-the-art survey of available middleware platforms for use in a telematics environment. It is complementary to the state-of-the-art survey of middleware architectures [Sinderen99], which focuses on architectures and standards, independent of specific platforms. The purpose of this document is firstly to present a broad picture of the different kinds of middleware technologies in use, and secondly to enumerate a list of middleware products and tools which are candidates for use in the Amidst project. The emphasis is on practical solutions which can provide a sound basis for the prototyping work in Amidst. The basic concepts of middleware and an overview of the current state of middleware technologies are presented. Current approaches can be classified into: Message Oriented Middleware, Distributed Transaction Processing (TP) Monitors, Remote Procedure Call Middleware, Object Middleware (or Object Request Brokers). A brief explanation of each category is given, followed by a more in depth examination of object middleware. Criteria are proposed for selection of a product for use in practical development and available tools and products are surveyed and evaluated in terms of their suitability for the future prototyping activities in Amidst.