Polyorb: A schizophrenic middleware to build versatile reliable distributed applications

Abstract

The development of real-time distributed applications requires middleware providing both reliability and performance. Middleware must be adaptable to meet application requirements and integrate legacy components. Current middleware provides only partial solutions to these issues. Moreover, they newer address all of them. Thus, a new generation of middleware is required. We have introduced the schizophrenic middleware concept as an integrated solution to build versatile reliable distributed applications. PolyORB, our implementation of schizophrenic middleware, supports various distribution models: CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), DSA (Ada 95 Distributed System Annex), Message Passing (an adaptation of Java Message Service to Ada 95) and Web Server paradigm (close to what AWS offers). In this paper, we describe the implementation of PolyORB and provide a summary of our experience regarding the issues mentioned above.