Integrative approach of Web services and universal plug and play within an AV scenario

The increase of networking capabilities even of small devices leads to a rising demand for distributed applications, for which seamless interoperability between devices and applications is essential. As a basis for the required and emerging middleware, service oriented architectures (SOA) have become the dominant design paradigm. In the field of embedded, mostly home used devices, universal plug and play (UPnP) can be regarded as an early SOA standard, that has gained momentum and is supported by more and more products. A more advanced suite of SOA standards is known as Web services (WS), that were originally developed from the needs for interoperability in commercial communications between enterprises. In the SIRENA funded project, Web services have been selected as basis for device oriented middleware in several fields like industrial, telecommunications, automotive and home devices. In the latter, the rising availability of UPnP demands an integrative approach for advanced solutions in a distributed audio-video environment with a large number of devices and distributed applications. The paper highlights some UPnP issues and WS characteristics, proposes practical rules for proper interface design of device related service oriented architectures, and finally describes the integrative solution for an advanced media replication service based on Web services and UPnP devices.