A Middleware Service for Increasing Applications Integration Availability

Abstract

Middleware has become an integral part of many distributed applications offering effective integration and interoperability solutions. In some situations a problem may occur where the integration of distributed information applications may be affected by scheduled unavailability of one or more of these applications. The scheduled unavailability occurs due to several reasons including application or data backup, software or hardware maintenance for the application's platform, executing periodic processes such as file reorganization or end-of-period processes, application maintenance, or application migration. This research introduces a new middleware service called Active Persistent Service. Unlike regular middleware persistent services, this active service can provide consistent responses instead of the unavailable applications for other applications. This service helps increase the integration availability of distributed applications without fully replicating the application environment such as application platforms, application programs and application data. The proposed service can be used to maintain the integration among distributed applications during scheduled unavailability of one of these applications. In addition, the proposed service enables highly available applications integrations while maintaining the data and state consistency of the applications. This service provides a cost-effective solution for increasing the availability of applications integration.