SBIR-STTR Award

The commercial web services deployment model is simply not suitable for service-based architectures (SBAs) in a tactical environment. In a commercial SBA, service providers are stable and offer near-100% availability. Moreover, their access points (URLs) do not change. In a tactical military environment, however, services are short-lived and their access points change frequently. Consider, for example, the properties that a video feed from an unmanned aircraft would have if it were implemented as a web service. One solution is to create a service broker that is responsible for tracking the location and availability of service providers. The feasibility of such a broker has been demonstrated in a J2EE environment, but the emerging Service Logic Execution Environment (SLEE) standard may offer an even better solution. This effort will study the feasibility of implementing a brokered service deployment framework in a SLEE container. It will address issues such as avoiding single points of failure and selecting services by real-time context (such as an aircraft's location). Finally, this effort will create a working prototype of such a framework and test it at a major exercise

Tactical environments impose constraints on service-oriented architecture that are not present in the strategic and commercial worlds. These constraints include limited service lifetimes, changing access points, and limited bandwidth. Many of these can be overcome by mediating service requests through a service broker. Java Business Integration provides an open standard for creating such a broker, and also offers a framework for the insertion of value-added services, including third-party products. Value-added services can include automated bridges to peer-to-peer networks such as that of Future Combat Systems. The availability of such bridges, whose creation can be automated, will allow peer-to-peer networks to interact seamlessly with providers of web services. The introduction of service brokers, particularly multiple brokers acting in concert, can also provide correct bindings to identical service providers that differ only in current context properties, such as geographic location; the resolution of such providers is another significant problem in tactical environments

Keywords:
SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE, SERVICE-BASED ARCHITECTURE, TACTICAL, JBI, FCS, SOSCOE, ENTERPRISE SERVICE BUS, ESB