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J. Wienke, 06/10/2011 05:39 PM

Overview¶

easier integration of complex (partially) distributed systems required
- in-house (one middleware)
- adaption (combination with other middlewares)
targeting at technical architecture (only supporting functional concepts)
performance requirements
platform requirements
programming language requirements
basis for describing and analyzing systems required
open architecture
- specifications for data format and transport protocols

XCF:

identified problems:
- Footprint too large for embedded systems
- Architectural erosion
- Unmaintainable code base
lessons learned:
- layered architecture with improved functional decomposition in distinct libraries, layers:
  - core (bus realization across different transports)
  - tools
  - xml compatibility layer
  - XCF API adapters
clear dependency statements:
- core must survive with the least amount of external libraries

Event-driven middleware with broadcast semantics
- Additional patterns implemented on top of this base functionality
logically unified bus across multiple transports
- currently a spread-based and an in-process transport are available
- extensible to other transports -> compatibility to existing frameworks
Bus is structured by hierarchical channels
- / receives all messages of sub-scopes like /a/test

lightweight:
- small dependency footprint for the core layer
- Targeting at embedded systems (e.g. Nao)
Languages: cpp, java, python, common lisp
- real implementations, no bindings to provide natural interfaces in each language
No single wire type like XML:
- instead arbitrary client data is serialized to different wire types using (user-installed) converters
  - default set of converters exists (e.g. source:/trunk/cpp/core/src/rsb/converter/StringConverter.cpp)
- provide flexible and fast serialization mechanisms
- XML support layer as additional library