RECOM: a reflective architecture of middleware

Current middleware is limited in its flexibility and adaptability in the face of varying environment and different user requirements. Applying the reflection technology to the middleware design has become a new research field. First, the concepts of reflection and reflective middleware are introduced, and what benefits from reflective middleware are pointed out. This paper compares the processing of middleware and the reflection mechanism, and then the reflective view of middleware is yielded. Based on this, the idea of employing binding-reification reflective model in middleware design is proposed and used in the design of a reflective middleware prototype named RECOM. Whereafter, this paper details the implementation of RECOM about its binding factories, reflective structure, and configurable reflective layers. Finally, some related work is discussed, and some concluding remarks and topics for further study are presented.