Middleware² Overview

In fact, the entire TPS+Plus infrastructure is based on Middleware². This technology offers an ideal platform upon which real-time transactions and market data is encapsulated and distributed to broad (1000s) numbers of client/server applications. This client/server paradigm allows clients to register for objects from servers participating in the enterprise environment through various acquisition methods. Upon receiving these requests, servers respond by publishing the object image and maintaining its state by continuing to publish real-time updates as the object changes. Applications (client or server) participate in the environment via the IT Class Library (ITCL). This ITCL establishes a virtual session to an IT Object Distributor (ITOD). A single ITOD supports many client and/or server sessions and there can be many ITOD’s participating in an enterprise system. As such, an enterprise system is fully scalable regarding both the number of applications and the rate of object updates distributed throughout the system.

Through their single session, applications can communicate with all other client/server instances connected to any other ITOD in the system. Applications need not be aware of how to communicate to other applications, where they are connected within the system, or in what format objects or messages are distributed amongst applications. ITOD’s within a system cooperate to provide request/response routing of object and message traffic through connection, service, and object resolution protocols common to CORBA standards. These protocols are implemented upon standard TCP/IP and Multicast and are part of InfoDyne’s Middleware² domain. Applications simply interact with the ITOD to share objects, pass messages, and respond to events.