An integrated architecture for open distributed multimedia computing

Most existing research in the field of distributed multimedia computing is at the level of isolated system components, such as communication and operating system support for multimedia. The application level support for distributed multimedia and continuous media has so far been largely neglected. Little work has yet been carried out on comprehensively integrated platforms that combine authoring, presentation, operating system support and network communications into a cohesive environment for multimedia development. On the other hand the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) from the Object Management Group has become a standard for open distributed object systems in the industry. However, CORBA does not take the special requirements of distributed multimedia into consideration. To tackle these problems, we are pursuing an integrative approach of providing general mechanisms for developing open multimedia services in a high speed, telecommunication network environment in an architecture called TOMA. The TOMA CORBA-based architecture provides an open, environment for distributed multimedia applications that combines all aspects of multimedia support. It accomplishes its objectives through the use of an open distributed object model based on CORBA, an adaptive and customizable multimedia operating system, an open rendering environment extended for continuous media, a toolkit for high speed ATM network communications, and a high-level scripting language for composing multimedia objects. In particular, a CORBA-compliant fast event service has been designed and implemented to loosely integrate distributed multimedia components.