Extending the OBJECTIVE Benchmark for Evaluation of Active Rules in a Distributed Component Integration Environment

This research presents a benchmark for the evaluation of active rules within a distributed component integration environment. The benchmark is based on the OBJECTIVE active database benchmark. Our work was specifically performed in the context of the Integration Rules (IRules) project that uses active rules for the integration of distributed software components, which are based on the Enterprise JavaBeans component model. In addition to mapping the test rules of the OBJECTIVE benchmark to the integration rules of the IRules system, we have extended the OBJECTIVE benchmark to test additional features of a component-based active rule system, such as the event detection time, the rule execution time related to the invocation of methods on components, asynchronous coupling modes, and the rule processor execution time under a heavy event load. Although the research presents specific performance evaluation results for the IRules project, the approach more generally demonstrates the manner in which an existing rule processing benchmark for a centralized environment can be adapted and extended for use in a rule-based approach to distributed component integration.