Distributing Real Time Data From a Multi-Node Large Scale Contact Center Using Corba

This thesis researches and evaluates the current technologies available for developing a system for propagation of Real-Time Data from a large scale Enterprise Server to large numbers of registered clients on the network. The large scale Enterprise Server being implemented is a Contact Centre Server, which can be a standalone system or part of a multi-nodal system. This paper makes three contributions to the study of scalable real-time notification services. Firstly, it defines the research of the different technologies and their implementation for distributed objects in today\u27s world of computing. Secondly, the paper explains how we have addressed key design challenges faced when implementing a Notification Service for TAO, which is our CORBA-compliant real-time Object Request Broker (ORB). The paper shows how to integrate and configure CORBA features to provide real-time event communication. Finally, the paper analyzes the results of the implementation and how it compares to existing technologies being used for the propagation of Real-Time Data

An architectural comparison of distributed object technologies

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-117).by Jay Ongg.M.Eng

Orchestration of heterogeneous middleware services and its application to a comand and control platform

MSC Dissertation in Computer EngineeringDistributed objects was, until recently, the leading technology in the design and implementation of component-based architectures, such as the ones based on services, better known as Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). Although established in the market for more than a decade, and therefore mature, these technologies have failed to overcome the porting of the SOA concept to the Web. Web services are a recent technology that has been growing in the last few years. Their acceptance has increased over enterprises and organizations as they seem to overcome the Web and interoperability related problems of the Distributed Objects technology. Web services provide interoperability between systems and that is undoubtedly a strength of this technology since this is a crucial aspect of nowadays business. Moreover, the widespread of services led to the recent introduction of the service composition concept, that although being a technology independent concept,is closely related to Web services and there is no tool support for other technologies. Nonetheless, distributed objects still play an important role in the development of distributed systems, namely due to performance issues that are important when it comes to the internals of a platform. However, the use of service composition in these distributed object-based platforms requires the exposure of their composing services as Web services. The main objective of this masters thesis is improve the state-of-the-art in the support for the composition of services originating from distributed objects-based platforms. Bearing in mind that these kind of platforms are composed by several services, the idea is to present a platform as a set of Web services in order to be able to orchestrate them

Aviation System Analysis Capability Executive Assistant Design

In this technical document, we describe the design developed for the Aviation System Analysis Capability (ASAC) Executive Assistant (EA) Proof of Concept (POC). We describe the genesis and role of the ASAC system, discuss the objectives of the ASAC system and provide an overview of components and models within the ASAC system, and describe the design process and the results of the ASAC EA POC system design. We also describe the evaluation process and results for applicable COTS software. The document has six chapters, a bibliography, three appendices and one attachment

Security in a Distributed Processing Environment

Distribution plays a key role in telecommunication and computing systems today. It has become a necessity as a result of deregulation and anti-trust legislation, which has forced businesses to move from centralised, monolithic systems to distributed systems with the separation of applications and provisioning technologies, such as the service and transportation layers in the Internet. The need for reliability and recovery requires systems to use replication and secondary backup systems such as those used in ecommerce. There are consequences to distribution. It results in systems being implemented in heterogeneous environment; it requires systems to be scalable; it results in some loss of control and so this contributes to the increased security issues that result from distribution. Each of these issues has to be dealt with. A distributed processing environment (DPE) is middleware that allows heterogeneous environments to operate in a homogeneous manner. Scalability can be addressed by using object-oriented technology to distribute functionality. Security is more difficult to address because it requires the creation of a distributed trusted environment. The problem with security in a DPE currently is that it is treated as an adjunct service, i.e. and after-thought that is the last thing added to the system. As a result, it is not pervasive and therefore is unable to fully support the other DPE services. DPE security needs to provide the five basic security services, authentication, access control, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation, in a distributed environment, while ensuring simple and usable administration. The research, detailed in this thesis, starts by highlighting the inadequacies of the existing DPE and its services. It argues that a new management structure was introduced that provides greater flexibility and configurability, while promoting mechanism and service independence. A new secure interoperability framework was introduced which provides the ability to negotiate common mechanism and service level configurations. New facilities were added to the non-repudiation and audit services. The research has shown that all services should be security-aware, and therefore would able to interact with the Enhanced Security Service in order to provide a more secure environment within a DPE. As a proof of concept, the Trader service was selected. Its security limitations were examined, new security behaviour policies proposed and it was then implemented as a Security-aware Trader, which could counteract the existing security limitations.IONA TECHNOLOGIES PLC & ORANG

Traffic Profiles and Performance Modelling of Heterogeneous Networks

This thesis considers the analysis and study of short and long-term traffic patterns of heterogeneous networks. A large number of traffic profiles from different locations and network environments have been determined. The result of the analysis of these patterns has led to a new parameter, namely the 'application signature'. It was found that these signatures manifest themselves in various granularities over time, and are usually unique to an application, permanent virtual circuit (PVC), user or service. The differentiation of the application signatures into different categories creates a foundation for short and long-term management of networks. The thesis therefore looks from the micro and macro perspective on traffic management, covering both aspects. The long-term traffic patterns have been used to develop a novel methodology for network planning and design. As the size and complexity of interconnected systems grow steadily, usually covering different time zones, geographical and political areas, a new methodology has been developed as part of this thesis. A part of the methodology is a new overbooking mechanism, which stands in contrast to existing overbooking methods created by companies like Bell Labs. The new overbooking provides companies with cheaper network design and higher average throughput. In addition, new requirements like risk factors have been incorporated into the methodology, which lay historically outside the design process. A large network service provider has implemented the overbooking mechanism into their network planning process, enabling practical evaluation. The other aspect of the thesis looks at short-term traffic patterns, to analyse how congestion can be controlled. Reoccurring short-term traffic patterns, the application signatures, have been used for this research to develop the "packet train model" further. Through this research a new congestion control mechanism was created to investigate how the application signatures and the "extended packet train model" could be used. To validate the results, a software simulation has been written that executes the proprietary congestion mechanism and the new mechanism for comparison. Application signatures for the TCP/IP protocols have been applied in the simulation and the results are displayed and discussed in the thesis. The findings show the effects that frame relay congestion control mechanisms have on TCP/IP, where the re-sending of segments, buffer allocation, delay and throughput are compared. The results prove that application signatures can be used effectively to enhance existing congestion control mechanisms.AT&T (UK) Ltd, Englan

A mechanism for creating web service interface to scientific applications.

Science is becoming increasingly multi-disciplinary and complicated. To solve complex scientific problems, we often need to integrate software and customize workflows to suit a particular problem. To make progress on key scientific issues, extended scientific collaborations are growingly dependent on complex workflows for data analysis and simulation. Service Oriented Architecture has gained popularity in recent years within scientific research community. It has been broadly accepted as a means of structuring interactions among distributed software services. Service Oriented Architecture is a new paradigm for accessing, integrating and coordinating loosely coupled software systems in a standardized way. It aims to reduce the cost of building and maintaining complex software systems while increasing their re-usability. However, most of the large industrial and scientific applications available today were written well before the introduction of Grid computing and Service Oriented Architectures. Hence, they are neither service oriented nor Grid-aware. There is a growing need to integrate them into Grid-aware applications based on Service Oriented Architecture. How to integrate these legacy applications into the Grid with the least possible effort and the best performance has become a crucial point. The majority of the applications developed and used by scientific communities are command-line applications. They are written in FORTRAN, C, and a host of scripting languages. In addition to being fast and efficient, these applications represent state-of- the-art science; however, they are bound by many limitations which make it difficult to compose complex workflows from them and run them on a distributed set of resources. By converting these command-line legacy applications into Application Services, it becomes easy to compose complex workflows from them and run them on the distributed resources. There are some research programs aiming at integrating the legacy codes into Grid infrastructure. Some frameworks have been developed to compose and run scientific workflows on a Grid. A number of systems are available to allow scientists to Grid- enabling their existing applications without having to write extra code or modify their applications. But most of them do not provide a toolkit for wrapping an application as a Grid-aware Web service. Few of the systems have addressed the issue of security. This thesis presents an approach to reducing the required effort needed in developing Application Services for end users. Also during the execution of complex scientific workflows, Application Services often become unavailable primarily due to the unreliable nature of the resources that host them. When an Application Service becomes unavailable, all workflows that are accessing it have to stop, and this means wasting a great deal of time and resources. This thesis offers a new solution to this problem, via providing a mechanism by which Application Service can be created on-demand from workflows in case it is unavailable