Patent ID: 7505482

Claim:
A method of providing services for an application middle layer between a plurality of different applications and a network layer of a next generation network, comprising: determining common services used by the plurality of different applications irrespective of whether the common services are associated with use of the next generation network; abstracting the common services to provide a common interface to the services to the plurality of different applications; and incorporating the abstracted common services into the application middleware as common infrastructure elements; wherein the steps of determining common services, abstracting the common services and incorporating the abstracted common services comprises: scoping the middleware layer; modeling the middleware services; modeling domains for the middleware services; and generating services provided by the middleware layer based on results of scoping the middleware layer, modeling the middleware services and modeling domains for the middleware services; wherein scoping the middleware layer comprises: identifying functionality and services provided to the applications; identifying a set of services supported by the middleware layer; and identifying a set of domains resident in the middleware layer; wherein modeling the middleware services layer comprises: modeling each of the identified services supported by the middleware layer; developing a domain chart; developing an activity diagram; and wherein modeling domains comprises: identifying domains needed for each identified service provided to the applications; determining a union of the identified domains to identify a list of domains need for the middleware layer; developing a mission statement for each domain; and developing a class specification for each domain in the union.