Query: middleware

title: QoS aware middleware for Web services composition
abstract: The paradigmatic shift from a Web of manual interactions to a Web of programmatic interactions driven by Web services is creating unprecedented opportunities for the formation of online business to business (B2B) collaborations. In particular, the creation of value added services by composition of existing ones is gaining a significant momentum. Since many available Web services provide overlapping or identical functionality, albeit with different quality of service (QoS) a choice needs to be made to determine which services are to participate in a given composite service. This paper presents a middleware platform which addresses the issue of selecting Web services for the purpose of their composition in a way that maximizes user satisfaction expressed as utility functions over QoS attributes, while satisfying the constraints set by the user and by the structure of the composite service. Two selection approaches are described and compared: one based on local (task level) selection of services and the other based on global allocation of tasks to services using integer programming.

title: Middleware for Internet of Things: A Survey
abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) envisages a future in which digital and physical things or objects (e.g. smartphones, TVs, cars) can be connected by means of suitable information and communication technologies, to enable a range of applications and services. The IoT's characteristics, including an ultra large scale network of things, device and network level heterogeneity, and large numbers of events generated spontaneously by these things, will make development of the diverse applications and services a very challenging task. In general, middleware can ease a development process by integrating heterogeneous computing and communications devices, and supporting interoperability within the diverse applications and services. Recently, there have been a number of proposals for IoT middleware. These proposals mostly addressed wireless sensor networks (WSNs) a key component of IoT, but do not consider RF identification (RFID) machine to machine (M2M) communications, and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) other three core elements in the IoT vision. In this paper, we outline a set of requirements for IoT middleware, and present a comprehensive review of the existing middleware solutions against those requirements. In addition, open research issues, challenges, and future research directions are highlighted.

title: IoT Middleware: A Survey on Issues and Enabling Technologies
abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) provides the ability for humans and computers to learn and interact from billions of things that include sensors, actuators, services, and other Internet connected objects. The realization of IoT systems will enable seamless integration of the cyber world with our physical world and will fundamentally change and empower human interaction with the world. A key technology in the realization of IoT systems is middleware, which is usually described as a software system designed to be the intermediary between IoT devices and applications. In this paper, we first motivate the need for an IoT middleware via an IoT application designed for real time prediction of blood alcohol content using smartwatch sensor data. This is then followed by a survey on the capabilities of the existing IoT middleware. We further conduct a thorough analysis of the challenges and the enabling technologies in developing an IoT middleware that embraces the heterogeneity of IoT devices and also supports the essential ingredients of composition, adaptability, and security aspects of an IoT system.

title: A Reference Model for Internet of Things Middleware
abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) is a term used to describe an environment where billions of objects, constrained in terms of resources "things" are connected to the Internet, and interacting autonomously. With so many objects connected in IoT solutions, the environment in which they are placed becomes smarter. A software, called middleware, plays a key role since it is responsible for most of the intelligence in IoT, integrating data from devices, allowing them to communicate, and make decisions based on collected data. Then, considering requirements of IoT platforms, a reference architecture model for IoT middleware is analyzed, detailing the best operation approaches of each proposed module, as well as proposes basic security features for this type of software. This paper elaborates on a systematic review of the related literature, exploring the differences between the current Internet and IoT based systems, presenting a deep discussion of the challenges and future perspectives on IoT middleware. Finally, it highlights the difficulties for achieving and enforcing a universal standard. Thus, it is concluded that middleware plays a crucial role in IoT solutions and the proposed architectural approach can be used as a reference model for IoT middleware.

title: Performance evaluation of IoT middleware
abstract: Connected objects in a billion scale are expected in the Internet of Things (IoT) These objects (things) are interacting autonomously, with minimal human intervention and connected to the Internet. Most of these objects are constrained in terms of resources, meaning that their intelligence is delegated to a smarter player, a software, identified as middleware. It is present in most IoT scenarios because it solves interoperability problems, allowing previously incompatible devices to communicate, while also integrates and makes decisions based on collected data. This paper presents a performance evaluation study of open source middleware solutions, including a proprietary solution developed at Inatel for the Inatel Smart Campus. Performance metrics, both qualitative and quantitative to evaluate middleware solutions objectively are also proposed. The results are analyzed and it is concluded that the proposed metrics are well adjusted for this type of platforms and can play a key role when choosing the best middleware solution to deploy in a given IoT solution. Sitewhere is the middleware platform that obtained better performance in the study. An overview of IoT middleware and their importance was highlighted and presented.Proposal of qualitative and quantitative metrics to objectively evaluate the performance of IoT middleware solutions.A performance evaluation study in a real scenario of open source middleware solutions is conducted using the proposed metrics.Invaluable learned lessons during the study are included and presented for readers.

title: Performance evaluation of MQTT and CoAP via a common middleware
abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) typically consist of sensor nodes and gateways that operate on devices with limited resources. As a result, WSNs require bandwidth efficient and energy efficient application protocols for data transmission. Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are two such protocols proposed for resource constrained devices. In this paper, we design and implement a common middleware that supports MQTT and CoAP and provides a common programming interface. We design the middleware to be extensible to support future protocols. Using the common middleware, we conducted experiments to study the performance of MQTT and CoAP in terms of end to end delay and bandwidth consumption. Experimental results reveal that MQTT messages have lower delay than CoAP messages at lower packet loss rates and higher delay than CoAP messages at higher loss rates. Moreover, when the message size is small and the loss rate is equal to or less than 25% CoAP generates lower additional traffic than MQTT to ensure message reliability.

title: Towards a trust evaluation middleware for cloud service selection
abstract: With the advent of cloud computing, employing various cloud services to build highly reliable cloud applications has become increasingly popular. The trustworthiness of cloud services is a critical issue that hinders the development of cloud applications, and thus is an urgently required research problem. Previous studies evaluate trustworthiness of services via either QoS monitoring mechanisms or user feedback ratings, while seldom they combine both of them for enhancing service trust evaluation. This paper proposes a trustworthy selection framework for cloud service selection, named TRUSS. Aiming at developing an effective trust evaluation middleware for TRUSS, we propose an integrated trust evaluation method via combining objective trust assessment and subjective trust assessment. The objective trust assessment is based on QoS monitoring, while the subjective trust assessment is based on user feedback ratings. Experiments conducted using a synthesized dataset show that our proposed method significantly outperforms the other trust and reputation methods. A trustworthy cloud service selection framework is proposed.An objective trust measure based on QoS monitoring is proposed.A subjective trust measure based on user feedback ratings is proposed.Integrating objective and subjective trust assessment improves the performance.

title: Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things a survey
abstract: The next wave of communication and applications will rely on new services provided by the Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings, and cities. In the era of massive number of connected things and objects with high growth rate, several challenges have been raised, such as management, aggregation, and storage for big produced data. To address some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to the IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in the design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying a suitable "middleware" which sits between things and applications as a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next, we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then, we present several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and finally, a list of current challenges and issues in the design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.

title: Fog Computing: The Cloud IoT\/IoE Middleware Paradigm
abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological revolution that represents the future of connectivity and reachability. In the IoT, things refer to any object on the face of the Earth, whether it is a communicating device or a noncommunicating "dumb" object. From a smart device to a leaf of a tree or a beverage bottle, anything can be part of the Internet. The objects become communicating nodes over the Internet through data communication means, primarily through radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The IoT includes smart objects as well. Smart objects are digital, physical entities, which perform some tasks for humans and/or the environment. This is why the IoT is not only a hardware and software paradigm but also includes interaction and social aspects.

title: A Microservice based Middleware for the Digital Factory
abstract: In recent years a considerable effort has been spent by research and industrial communities in the digitalization of production environments with the main objective of achieving a new automation paradigm, more flexible, responsive to changes, and safe. This paper presents the architecture, and discusses the benefits, of a distributed middleware prototype supporting a new generation of smart factory enabled applications with special attention paid to simulation tools. Devised within the scope of MAYA EU project, the proposed platform aims at being the first solution capable of empowering shop floor Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) providing an environment for their Digital Twin along the whole plant life cycle. The platform implements a microservice IoT Big Data architecture supporting the distributed publication of multidisciplinary simulation models, managing in an optimized way streams of data coming from the shop floor for real digital synchronization, ensuring security and confidentiality of sensible data.