Middleware for Next Generation Internet Computing8th MW4NG Workshop of the14th International Middleware Conference 2013 Previous years: | 7th MW4NG 2012 6th MW4SOC 2011 5th MW4SOC 2010 4th MW4SOC 2009 3rd MW4SOC 2008 2nd MW4SOC 2007 1st MW4SOC 2006 | |||
http://2013.middleware-conference.org/ December 9 – 13, 2013 Beijing, China |
While dependability and security become cornerstones of the information society, they are impaired by change, imprecision, and emerging behavior due to scale, dynamism, and heterogeneity. To address these challenges for next generation Internet computing, key extra-functional properties should not be an "add on" or an "end to end task" anymore, but rather built in by means of Middleware.
Service oriented computing, cloud computing, socio-technical systems, and Web 2.0-style applications are important steps for next generation Internet computing, but still fall short when non functional (a.k.a. extra-functional) quality properties (e.g., dependability, security, performance, and scalability) need to be addressed. The emerging Internet communication architecture (e.g., from projects on the Internet of Things, the Future Internet, etc.) also requires middleware support for delivering computing applications and services. We can see many Internet Computing systems following proprietary end-to-end solutions and being weaved with application-specific approaches. This clearly hinders re-use, which can only be successfully leveraged by Middleware-based solutions. This in turn requires new flexibility for Middleware (adaptivity, elasticity, resilience) and new ways of collaboration between Middleware and applications/services.
Therefore, extra-functional quality properties need to be addressed not only by interfacing and communication standards, but also in terms of actual mechanisms, protocols, and algorithms. Some of the challenges are the administrative heterogeneity, the loose coupling between coarse-grained operations and long-running interactions, high dynamicity, and the required flexibility during run-time. Recently, massive-scale (e.g., big data, millions of participating parties in different roles) and mobility were added to the crucial challenges for Internet computing middleware. The proposed workshop consequently welcomes contributions on how specifically middleware can address the above challenges of next generation Internet computing.
09:00–10:30: Session 1
Keynote: The IoT Services Middleware Technology
Jinglin Li, Institute of Network Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
The Internet of Things (IoT) services middleware is located in the information service support layer, and is one of the core technologies of IoT. The IoT services middleware is often used to access intelligent sensors, M2M gateway, or some other special usage systems, to support the things' addressing, capabilities delivery and retrieve. The IoT services middleware can integrate the technologies of addressing, M2M, mass data storage and integration, complex event processing, which will support the IoT systems efficiently and improve IoT service levels.
P/S sockets: supporting publish/subscribe communication through the standard socket API
Manos Koutsoumpelias and Spyros Lalis
While the address-oriented datagram and reliable stream services supported by the UDP and TCP protocols are the foundation of distributed computing, other forms of communication are increasingly being used to build contemporary systems and applications. A popular alternative to datagram- and stream-based communication is the Publish/Subscribe (P/S) paradigm, where message forwarding and reception is done based on a topic or content descrip-tions instead of an address. Several middleware systems have been built to support this form of communication, on top of the socket API. Taking a different approach, we discuss how P/S networking can be supported through the socket API, so that this can serve as a universal interface for supporting different communication ab-stractions. To this end we introduce a new address family and extend the semantics of selected socket primitives to support P/S functions. Also, we describe a proof-of-concept implementation of the proposed socket extension, which features two protocols for ad-hoc and infrastructure-based P/S communication, respectively.
TMS - A Trusted Mail Repository Service using Public Storage Clouds
João Rodrigues, Bernardo Ferreira, and Henrique Domingos
In this paper we present the Trusted Mail System (TMS), a dependable Email repository service that explores multiple untrusted storage clouds for storing, accessing and searching private email data. The system architecture provides security and reliability services while leveraging the heterogeneity and diversity offered by different untrusted cloud storage solutions from different service providers. To address dependability issues, TMS enforces a security model that protects confidentiality and integrity of mailboxes stored in those clouds, adding availability, reliability and intrusion-tolerance guarantees. The system uses homomorphic encryption mechanisms and indexing techniques allowing ranked multi-keyword searching operations over encrypted email messages and its contents. We illustrate TMS feasibility from an implemented prototype, evaluating its performance, design options, and services. The experimental results show that the solution is viable, offers reliability and privacy control for the users and does not aggravate conditions of data-access latency and availability.
10:30–11:00: Morning Tea/Coffee Break
11:00–12:30: Session 2
Introducing concurrency in policy-based access control
Maarten Decat, Bert Lagaisse, Bruno Crispo, and Wouter Joosen
Policy-based access control aims to decouple access control rules from the application they constrain by expressing these rules in declarative access control policies. Performance of policy-based access control is of growing importance, but concurrent and distributed policy evaluation has received little research attention and current policy evaluation engines are still single-machine and fully sequential to the best of our knowledge. We believe that concurrent policy evaluation is necessary to meet the performance and scalability requirements of next-generation internet applications and aid the maturation of policy-based access control. Therefore, this paper presents an initial exploration of concurrent policy evaluation. We illustrate the performance of current policy evaluation engines, model the performance of policy evaluation in terms of the characteristics of a policy, list opportunities for concurrency, describe the need for concurrency control and specifically show how concurrency can be used to improve throughput based on our prototype.
Modeling Uncertainty for Middleware-based Streaming Power Grid Applications
Ilge Akkaya, Yan Liu, Edward A. Lee, and Ian Gorton
The power grid is incorporating high throughput sensor devices into power distribution networks. The future power grid needs to guarantee accuracy and responsiveness of applications that consume data from multiple sensor streams. The end-to-end performance and overall scalability of cyberphysical energy applications depend on the middleware's ability to handle multi-source sensor data, which exhibits uncertain behavior under highly variable numbers of sensors and middleware topologies. In this paper, we present a parametric approach to model middleware uncertainty and to analyze its effect on distributed power applications. The models encapsulate the entire data flow paths from sensor devices, through network and middleware components to the power application nodes that utilize sensor data streams. Using the Ptolemy II framework for modeling and simulation, we generate Monte Carlo samples of uncertain parameters that are used to generate parameterized middleware models that are used in end-to-end Discrete-Event(DE) system simulation simulation. The simulation results are further analyzed using regression methods to reveal the parameters that are influential in the limiting middleware behavior to achieve temporal requirements of the power applications.
Detecting Cloud Provisioning Errors Using an Annotated Process Model
Xiwei Xu, Ingo Weber, Len Bass, Liming Zhu, Hiroshi Wada, and Fei Teng
In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of annotating a process model with assertions to detect errors in cloud provisioning in near real time. Our proposed workflow is: a) construct a process model of the desired provisioning activities using log data, b) use the process model to determine appropriate annotation triggers and annotate the process model with assertions, c) use the process model to monitor the deployment logs as they are generated, d) trigger the assertion checking based on process activities and log entries, and e) check the assertions to determine errors. For a production deployment tool, Asgard, we have implemented the steps involving constructing a process model, using the model to determine appropriate annotation triggers, triggering the annotation checking based on Asgard log files, and detecting errors. Our prototype has detected errors that cross deployment tool boundaries and go undetected by Asgard; it further has detected other errors substantially more quickly than Asgard would have.
Karl M. Göschka (main contact)
Vienna University of Technology
Phone: +43 664 180 6946
mw4ng@dedisys.org
José Pereira
High Assurance Software Lab, INESC TEC and U. Minho, Portugal
Patrick C. K. Hung
Faculty of Business and IT, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
This workshop has its own ISBN and will be included in the ACM digital library.
