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A Noble Design Approach towards Distributed System Architecture Biswajit Biswal IBM India Software Lab [email protected]  Abstract—Distributed System refers to systems, which provides synchronous & asynchronous communication through a variety of devices and channels. With the constant increase of information, it is imperative to think of such a model that facilitates easy accessibility to information, efficient knowledge management, information sharing and ease of human interactions. Distributed system will transform the static collection of information into a distributed device of computation. It integrates multiple heterogeneous applications to a single complete suite. The system specifications are represented as a virtual architecture described in a Collaborative Model, which in turn is arranged as a set of sub-models. Each sub-model provides a technology-independent and device-independent representational schema for the overall architecture. Index Terms—Distributed Intelligent Performance Computing, Parallel Processing

Systems,

High

I. INTRODUCTION

O

ver the last decade, a whole industry sector has emerged, typically known as Enterprise Applications. Enterprise Applications (e.g. Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), Data Warehouse, Legacy, Mainframes etc) forms the base for a Distributed System. With the rapid increase in usage of such Systems, information management is becoming more complex and tedious. Organizations are having multiple EIS applications to cater to their business needs, often from multiple vendors. Nonmanufacturing businesses, non-profit organizations and governments now all utilize Enterprise Systems. This results in a strong inclination towards development of Composite Applications, which combine integration of existing application with the new Applications. Moreover, the advent of the Internet, client/server computing, globalization and business process re-engineering; have together forced corporate information technology to continually seek out new ways to make different systems talk to each other. More recently, as the Internet has fuelled electronic B2B transactions, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) has broadened to accommodate B2B application integration. Distributed System provides a mean to integrate these

heterogeneous applications to an integrated and interactive application suite. These technologies provide software infrastructures and associated tools that attempt to make it easier to build new overarching applications from legacy systems that were never designed to work together. It is concerned with the ease with which a software component can be usefully incorporated into a broader application context. Collaboration models are the integration layers at each label of Data Abstraction or Transformation. Collaboration Models build around Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which uses XML format for communication that other application can ingest. This will make integration simpler through common transports, data formats and associated services (security, transactions etc.) The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II describes the architecture and the implementation is presented in Section III. Section IV gives an overview of the related work and finally Section V concludes the paper.

II. ARCHITECTURE The following diagram presents the architecture and the various communication layers. Multiple applications are stacked in a single layer and connected through adapters. Database adapter integrates the discrete database systems and the main Adapter is used for data communication among applications through message/services and data transformation. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) technology is used for service orchestration and aggregation and integrated with the main adapter. Workflow manager provides Human Workflow Services and used for dynamic UI generation. Global UI layer is the centralized user interface independent of underlying applications. Global UI represents Personal Computers, Hand held devices such as Mobiles, PDA’s etc. All these components are loosely coupled with each other and can be configured in different systems across a network. Most of the components are available through different vendors and the selection is based on business needs, compatibility and technology. The runtime environment for Workflow Manager, BPEL & Adapter is provided by an application server. Database Adapter can be integrated with any DBMS. .

2

Global UI

Workflow Manager

BPEL Service Orchestration/Aggregation

Adapter

EIS

D/W House

BI

Web Apps

Legacy Apps

Database Adapter

DBMS DBMS

DBMS Figure. 1. Architecture

A. DBMS Database Management Systems (DBMS) are used to store information and often integrated with one or more applications. In a multi-application environment, there will be multiple discrete database systems like DBMS, RDBMS, ORDBMS or legacy systems. Collaborative System provides an interface called Database Adapter that handles all the database transactions and provides a uniform access to data managed by any number of applications. B. Database Adapter Database Adapter presents a single view of the underlying database systems to the whole system. It deals with the problem of making heterogeneous, “external” data sources accessible via a common interface and an integrated schema: users should perceive the collection of data as being managed by a single database system. The Database Adapter enables querying of database tables from a BPEL process by using

any Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) provider. Distributed transactions are supported through the use of JDBC drivers that support the Java Transaction API (JTA). It provides an interface-driven method for communication with a database as a service. It enables Database insert, update, delete operations, non-destructive read, table alterations, trigger creation etc. Nowadays, most Database Adapters are designed based on Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) framework. In contrast to Database systems, CORBA provides a flexible transparent distribution model with a larger scale set of services. CORBA does not support object persistence directly, but allows integration with different database systems. A Database Adapter provides a tight integration between the Object Request Broker (ORB) and the database systems. A lot of work has been done on this domain, whose details are out of scope of this paper.

3 C. Adapter

D. BPEL BPEL

SOAP

JCA/WSIF

Data Format Transformation EIS Native API

UDDI WSDL SOAP XML HTTP IIOP JMS SMTP

Choreography: CDL4WS Orchestration: BPEL4WS Web Service Java Service Database Enterprise Applications

Application Server Applications

Figure. 2. Adapter Adapter Services provide a way to integrate with heterogeneous EIS applications or Services. It is a lightweight implementation to support multiple vendors & platforms and access legacy, mainframe applications and so on. Adapters are described as Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) and exposed through Java Connector Architecture (JCA) or Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) mechanisms [29], allowing BPEL process to integrate with that service as though it were a standard Web Service. It provides both synchronous & asynchronous communication through SOA with loose coupling and extensibility. It translates the EIS native format to an application-independent or common format (XML) and back for bi-directional Inbound/Outbound Interactions. In case of n different applications, at most n + n transformations are needed (from each application-specific format into the neutral format and vice versa). Without such a common format, the adapters, in the worst case, would have to transform into the (n – 1) different formats of the other applications and vice versa, that is, n × (n – 1) transformations would be needed. The common format allows Global UI to use a library of interface components that does not need to be changed every time the information source changes. Adapter is an extension of message broker and manages the contracts between publishers and subscribers. When a business event takes place, the application will publish the message corresponding to that business event. The adapter reviews its lists of subscriptions and activates delivery to each subscriber for that message type. Subscribers receive only the data to which they subscribe. Typically, an adapter sends the data through a separate piece of middleware, called as Hub. A Hub can use a SOAP/HTTP, MIME/SMTP or Java/JMS channel to communicate. To be effective, the message delivery must include business transaction coordination, which is provided by BPEL.

Figure. 3. BPEL Components Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is a markup language for composing multiple services into an end-to-end business process [30]. BPEL is an XML specification that defines orchestration and design of process flows for integrating heterogeneous services such as: Web Services, Java Services, Database stored procedures, ERP applications etc. The BPEL services are designed around open standards to enable orchestration of services. The BPEL language provides several mechanisms, some of which enable: Synchronous and Asynchronous Interactions, Parallel Processing & Exception Management. The Java, Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Hyper-Text Transport Protocol (HTTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP), GET or POST protocols are used for invoking BPEL processes. It integrates a set of services to implement business processes, defines a sequence of activities called a process flow using a standard XML language, supports definition and invocation of synchronous & asynchronous services, enables structured message data exchanged with invoked services, provides its process flow as a service. A BPEL process flow in itself becomes a service and its operations & message structures are published using WSDL. Therefore, any BPEL process can be invoked like any other service. The BPEL standard is now referred to as BPEL for Web Services (BPEL4WS). However, through the Adapter Layer, BPEL can access any exposed Service. Choreography Definition Language for Web Services (CDL4WS) is a XMLbased language specification to address composing interoperable, peer-to-peer collaborations between parties regardless of their platform or programming model implementation. BPEL, when integrated with a Workflow Manager, interleave human interactions and connectivity to systems and services into a single end-to-end process flow.

4 E. Workflow Manager Workflow Manager is integrated with BPEL to provide Human Workflow Services, residing just below the Global UI Layer. It acts as an interface between User Interface & serverside components. Workflow Manager facilitates the following services such as: secure access to users, authentication, authorization, task assignments, task management service, task routing rules and the creation of workflow patterns and dispatching rules, notification to users and groups for when the actions need to be taken, task history and audit etc. Workflow Manager can be used to auto-generate JSP forms and CSS. It is very useful when the system has a Global User Interface which caters to multiple sub-applications. The User Interface is configured with Workflow Manager. Workflow is used for a business process that requires a user’s action and routed to single or multiple users with automatic escalation if a user does not take action within the allotted time. Workflow patterns can be adhoc wherein the task is routed until one of the assignees completes it and does not route it further. In Parallel workflow multiple users, working in parallel, must take action. Another important aspect of Workflow Manager is Notification Service. The Notification service enables users to be notified based on a set of preferences. The notification preferences specify who should be notified when the task is updated. The channels are email, fax, mobile or any hand-held devices. F. Global UI Global UI provides a common interaction pattern for the collaborative system, rather than requiring users to jump back and forth between different application interfaces. That is, as users perform a task that transcends the boundaries of the individual applications, they don’t have to remember the purpose and operation of each of the different applications and their multiple logins. The recent emergence of Web 2.0 technologies allows quick assembly of flexible application user interfaces in various devices, providing a better and richer user experience and improving user adoption.

III. IMPLEMENTATION This architecture style is implemented and various standard parameters are analyzed, an overview of which is presented below: Scalability: The architecture provides the scope to scale the system at any level without much overhead as all the components are loosely coupled. The adapters only need to be configured to incorporate the new applications or devices. Performance: A main hurdle in application integration is transaction delays. Here, the large chunk of data is transmitted in parts called as message parts. Thus a deadlock never occurs

at the application level. Adapter also manages the connections and monitors the load on each node. Reliability: It is of extreme importance that the data are transmitted reliably between applications and no data is lost in the transition. Every message parts are serialized and carry a notation of the parent message. Thus, the Adapter recognizes the various incoming message parts and accumulates properly. Security: The application data are of high sensitivity and the security of which is of prime importance. The major threat comes from the transport layer. Besides providing the basic authentication and authorization policy, the architecture has a unique split mechanism that takes care of it. A logical data unit is split into several irrelevant message parts, encrypted and sent to other applications via Adapter. Moreover, the message part alone doesn’t convey any sensible information at all, thus eroding the threat of hacking. Availability: The components and the connectors have to be available whenever a request is made. Moreover, the session and transaction management needs to be streamlined. By introducing Adapters at database and application level, this aspect is well taken care of. IV. DISCUSSION Integration of applications has been discussed through different architectures. One common architecture is the pointto-point connectivity of every applications, which becomes complex as applications increase. A Message Broker reduces the number of interfaces significantly by introducing a central tool for connecting to other applications. Recently the emergence of Process Broker extends the functionality of Message Brokers by encapsulating the process logic for connecting applications [7]. However, implementing process logic in Brokers make it tightly coupled with the applications. The Process Broker does not maintain control over external applications, which leads to redundancy. Instead, the Adapters, as discussed in the architecture, is a light weight alternative to Process Brokers and doesn’t incorporate any application specific processing logic. Rather the workflow services are managed by BPEL & Workflow Manager in a separate layer. Thus making the components in the Architecture loosely coupled. A technology related to Distributed Systems is Workflow Management, [26]. The traditional Workflow system only supports communication between users, concentrating on document routing. The next generation of Workflow technologies put the business processes in focus. By also involving automatic actors, the automation of the process events could be facilitated further, [27]. A set of blueprints [28] is proposed for modeling information systems by introducing new notions not supported by any recent tool or standard. The architecture presented here is supported on the standard protocol and universal language.

5 V. CONCLUSION In this paper a technical overview of distributed system architecture is presented and then the implementation & related work. The highlight of this architecture is the loosely coupled components at each layer and the communication using universal language like XML. The emergence of XML-based Web Services promises to provide a set of standard for application integration. Fundamental problems concerning aspects such as semantics, automatic data discovery and integration, and scalability remain as challenges for the research community. The next generation integration technology must be able to scale to handle large numbers of data sources with flexible, fast and scalable format transformation engines. Adapter technology needs to be enhanced to dynamically configure new data sources of arbitrary type (e.g. relational, nonrelational, ftp, file system etc). Ideally, it should be possible to locate a new source of data, automatically deploy or generate a suitable adaptor, and make the data immediately available to applications. Also, a master data management system needs to be designed for data migration of discrete datasets. Consequently there is a need for integration technologies to augment reflective interfaces with semantic descriptions of how the interfaces should be used. This will facilitate true dynamic discovery and integration. As the scale of integration grows, it will become increasingly problematic to find data that is relevant to a user’s or application’s needs. Most existing data sources are not accompanied by searchable catalogs and meta-data that can be used to locate data items of interest. This makes it imperative that next generation integration technology incorporates new techniques to automatically extract semantic information from data sources and link relevant data to applications. Finally, Applications Integration technologies are still being developed and it will be interesting to see how latest technological advancement impact the architectural style. REFERENCES [1]

John Timothy Taylor, Hon-Siew Yee,“Agent-Adapter Architecture for use in Enterprise Application Integration Systems,” United States Patent 6,256,676 B1 [2] Prashant Gupta, Katrina A. Mellen-Garnett,“Modular Application Collaboration,” United States Patent 5,913,061 [3] Ranjit N. Notani, John E. Mayer,“System and Process for Inter-domain planning analysis and optimization using model agents as partial replicas of remote domains”, United States Patent 5,995,945 [4] John Timothy Taylor, Hon-Siew Yee,“Extensible Distributed Enterprise Application Integration Systems,” United States Patent 6,738,975 B1 [5] RC Pike, “Global User Interface,” United States Patent 5579469 [6] Halevy, Ashish, Bitton, “Enterprise Information Integration: Successes, Challenges and Controversies,” SIGACM-SIGMOD 05 [7] Paul Johannesson, Erik Perjons, “Design Principles for Application Integration,” ACM CaiSE 00 [8] Paul Johannesson, Erik Perjons, “Design Principles for Process modelling in Enterprise Application Integration,” ACM CaiSE 00 [9] David S. Linthicum, “Enterprise Application Integration,” Book published by Addison-Wesley (2000). [10] Ron Jahavi, “Enterprise Application Integration with CORBA Component and Web-based Solutions,” Book published by Wiley

[11] J Sutherland, WJ van den Heuvel, “Enterprise Application Integration and complex adaptive systems” Communications of the ACM, Volume 45, Nov 10 (2002) [12] P. Makey, editor. Workflow: Integrating the Enterprise. Butler Group report, Hessle (1996) [13] Papazoglou, M. Agent Oriented Technology in support of E-Business: Enabling the development of “Intelligent” Business Agents for Adaptive, Reusable Software Communicatons of the ACM [14] Van den Enden, S., E. Van Hoeymissen, et al. “A Case Study in Application Integration.”, OOPSLA Business Object and Component Workshop. 15th Annu. Conf. On OOP Systems, Languages, and Applications, Minneapolis. [15] Puschmann, T., “Enterprise Application Integration-the case of Robert Bosch Group,” IEEE Hawaii Intl. Conf. On System Sciences, 2001. [16] Wolfgang Emmerich, Ernst Ellmer, and Henry Fieglein, “TIGRA – an architectural style for enterprise application integration,” ACM Intl. Conf. On Software Engineering 2001. [17] Jinyoul Lee, Keng Siau and Soongoo Hong, “Enterprise integration with ERP and EAI,” Communications of the ACM, Vol 46 pages 54-60, 2003. [18] Wilhelm Hasselbring, “Information System Integration,” Communications of the ACM, Vol 43 pages 32-38, 2000. [19] Oba M., Komoda N., “Multiple type workflow model for enterprise application integration”, IEEE Hawaii Intl. Conf. On System Sciences, 2001. [20] Gorton I., Liu A., “Architectures and technologies for enterprise application integration,” IEEE Intl. Conf. On Software Engineering 2004. [21] Vasconselos, Silva, Fernandes, Tribolet, “An Information System Architectural Framework for Enterprise Application Integration,” IEEE Hawaii Intl. Conf. On System Sciences, 2004. [22] Themistocleous, Irani, Kuljis, “Extending the Information System Lifecycle through Enterprise Application Integration: A Case Study Experience”, IEEE Hawaii Intl. Conf. on System Sciences, 2004. [23] Myungjae Kwak, Dongsoo Han, Jaeyong Shim, “A framework supporting dynamic workflow interoperation and enterprise application integration,” IEEE Hawaii Intl. Conf. On System Sciences, 2002. [24] Reverbel, Maccabe, “Making CORBA objects persistent: the object database adapter approach” ACM Conf. on Object Oriented Technologies Vol 3. [25] Shumilov, Cremers, “eXtensible Database Adapter – a Framework for Corba/ODBMS Integration,” proceedings of the 2nd Intl. Workshop on Computer Science and Information Technologies CSIT 2000. [26] Jablonski, Bussler, “Workflow Management,” Thomson London [27] Makey, P. “Workflow: Integrating the Enterprise. Butler Group report [28] Boar, Bernard, Constructing Blueprints for Enterprise IT Architecture, John Wiley & Sons [29] Newcomer, Eric, “Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI,” Addison Wesley Professional (ISBN: 0201750813 ) [30] BPEL4WS Specification

A Noble Design Approach towards Distributed System ...

heterogeneous applications to a single complete suite. The system ... With the rapid increase in usage of such. Systems ... a strong inclination towards development of Composite .... that service as though it were a standard Web Service. It.

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