The goal of the KIARA project is to provide a "Middleware for efficient and QoS/Security-aware invocation of services and exchange of messages" for the FI-PPP program and beyond. KIARA builds on top of a well-established, proven, and high-performance (RTI-DDS) and combines it with innovative research results to provide an advanced middleware layer that targets the specific requirements of the Future Internet.
KIARA improves on the state-of-the art in multiple ways:
- KIARA provides radical improvements in performance and scalability not only for traditional Web services, but also for distributed applications in general - ranging from tiny devices in the Internet of Things to high-performance computing applications.
- KIARA improves developer productivity and greatly simplifies application integration using a simple-to-use IDL for specifying the communication contract between peers as well as a novel API that allows applications to communicate in terms of their own data structures.
- KIARA dynamically and transparently selects the optimal communication mechanisms, protocols, and data representations to be used between two peers, including the traditional SOAP/REST protocols but also optimized binary formats and mechanisms like pointer forwarding, shared memory, and the use of specialized network infrastructures. An embedded compiler dynamically at run-time generates highly optimized code that transfers messages directly from application data structures to the network.
- KIARA uses simple, high-level specifications of QoS and security requirements from the application for automatically selecting the best communication strategy, thus clearly separating the high-level concerns of the application/developer from the concrete and varying technical details, such as the available network and other capabilities and resources.
- KIARA, for the first time, uses a "Secure By Design" approach for the communication architecture, thus trying to eliminate network connections as the dominant source of security threats.
This combination of a well-proven, existing middleware product with unique features based on latest research results forms an ideal basis for efficient and QoS/security-aware communication within FI-Ware, the FI-PPP program, and for general distributed applications.
Partners
Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Saarland University / Center for IT Security, Privacy, and Accountability (USAAR-CISPA), Proyectos y Sistemas de Mantenimiento SL (EPROS)
