On a Dynamic Software Update Framework for Messaging Oriented Middleware Services

Messaging oriented middleware (MOM) provides transparent communication services through synchronous and asynchronous messaging between distributed applications running on different operating systems over heterogeneous network infrastructures. While facilitating reliable services, MOM services themselves must survive frequent or routine upgrades for defect fixes, feature or functional extensions. We outline in this paper a dynamic service update framework for system wide online mixed version software upgrades by taking the advantages of inherent persistent queuing and state transition export mechanisms commonly in MOM implementations. Our goal is to demonstrate, through a real world application of proposed framework herein, that a service behavior oriented software upgrade methodology is in practical deployment superior to those that are either programming languages oriented, or runtime processes oriented focusing on inner software implementations.