R-MOM: A Component-Based Framework for Interoperable and Adaptive Asynchronous Middleware Systems

Systems of systems (SoS) are composed of subsystems such as Distributed, Information Technology, Real-Time and Embedded systems. Among distributed systems, Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) is used by SoS in order to share status information from system elements (component, service, etc.). Often several different MOM technologies are used in one SoS, then interoperability between these MOM is a requirement. In this paper, we present R-MOM, a component-based framework for interoperable and adaptive asynchronous middleware systems. R-MOM provides a reflective component architecture where one MOM functionality is embedded into one component which is modifiable at run-time. Loosely-coupling between reflective components permits to get a fined-personalization of MOM functionalities, such as protocol, encoding rule, Quality of Services (QoS) processing, data production/consumption, description, routing and filtering. Interoperability between integrated protocol functionalities is a consequence of architecture design. R-MOM interoperates with different kinds of MOM, from distributed message queues (Java Message Service, Advanced Message Queueing Protocol, 0MQ) to content-based publish/ subscribe systems (OMG's Data Distribution Service). This paper describes the architectural concepts of the R-MOM framework, discusses its implementation, and evaluates its interoperability capability.