Project : arles

Section: Software

MSDA: A Middleware for Service Discovery and Access in Pervasive Computing

Participants : Rafik Chibout, Agnès de La Chapelle, Valérie Issarny, Pierre-Guillaume Raverdy.

With the MSDA (Multi-protocol Service Discovery and Access) middleware, the pervasive computing environment is viewed as a dynamic composition of independent networks in which software applications use different protocols for discovering and accessing networked services. MSDA relies on specific plug-ins to interact with existing middleware, manages the efficient dissemination of the service information between the different networks, and enables clients to access all the networked services in them [19]. We have implemented a first prototype of MSDA in Java (J2SE 1.4.2 and 1.5) that currently includes support for 5 different service discovery protocols, and remote access for SOAP-based services. The different plug-ins enable us to experiment with both repository-based (Ariadne, OSGi) and multicast-based (SLP, UPnP) protocols. As demonstrated by the first MSDA prototype, diverse service discovery protocols can easily be integrated and early performance results are encouraging.

We are currently finalizing the prototype implementation packaging so as to release MSDA as open source software early 2006.