SMILE if you like messaging middleware that makes it easier to integrate
distributed applications in a service-oriented architecture.
IBM researchers are developing a new type of messaging middleware system,
called Smart Middleware Light Ends (SMILE), to simplify the integration of
applications from different vendors.
While there are not current plans to productize SMILE, Dorai said she
Current SOA
models for developers handling multiple requests and input streams are too
limited.
Many enterprises use publish-subscribe or queuing messaging technologies to
piece together distributed applications into a usable system.
Take e-commerce transactions on Amazon.com. Communication between Web pages
or sites is produced synchronously and asynchronously, allowing the computer
to charge a person’s credit card and send a confirmation message back to the
consumer.
But the deluge of code in this message-by-message approach in middleware
created by IBM, BEA and Oracle can be complex, expensive and unmanageable.
While middleware has become more intelligent about peeking at content to
determine what information to send a consumer, the number of messages sent
is still a burden on the system. This creates, in the parlance of the
industry, spaghetti code.
Chitra Dorai, manager of distributed messaging at IBM Research, said SMILE
aggregates event streams, detects alerts and makes changes in applications
as event information flows from the producers — the application components
sending messages — to information consumersv — through the middleware.
SMILE provides a mechanism for incorporating Web Services with event streams
and middleware changes as application changes occur between service
endpoints. SMILE also provides fault tolerance in the case of a network or
server failure to make sure messages are shuttled to fill requests.
For example, traditional middleware messaging techniques look at one-to-one
messaging, or filling a consumer request for a single stock quote. SMILE
could search out and present up-to-date stock quotes for the 20 most
actively traded stocks.
“This means you are not looking at one message instantaneously,” Dorai said
in an interview. “You have to know all the messages that are being published
by the producers throughout the day and maintained at every instance of time
what was the top 20 most actively traded stocks.”
Dorai said the middleware has to look at a bunch of messages over a period
of, say, 10 minutes and produce the updated information. The process is like
running a SQL query or XQuery across multiple streams of data that keep
changing over time, she said.
With SMILE, business users could ask developers to compose messages that
answer complex business questions, much the same way they request customized
reports from database administrators today.
The crux of SMILE is to give programmers a better model for programming and
managing distributed messaging systems by basing messaging distribution on
events.
When completed, the company thinks the software could be a boon to adopters
of distributed computing models like service-oriented architectures (SOA)
Jason Bloomberg, who researches distributed computing architectures for
ZapThink, said SMILE takes SOA to a new level, for two reasons.
“First, it shifts the focus of service interaction away from
request/response. And second, because it illustrates that SOA and
event-driven architecture shouldn’t be different approaches, but rather SOA
should fundamentally be event-driven.”
envisions the technology as something that will augment run-time programs
like WebSphere Application Server, or possibly in other middleware products.
