An aspect-oriented approach to bypassing middleware layers

The layered architecture of middleware platforms (such as CORBA, SOAP, J2EE) is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, layers provide services such as demarshaling, session management, request despatching, quality-of-service (QoS) etc. In a typical middleware platform, every request passes through each layer, whether or not the services provided by that layer are needed for that specific request. This rigid layer processing can lower overall system throughput, and reduce availability and/or increase vulnerability to denial-of-service attacks. For use cases where the response is a simple function of the request input parameters, bypassing middleware layers may be permissible and highly advantageous. Unfortunately, if an application developer desires to selectively bypass the middleware, and process some requests in the lower layer, she has to write platform-specific, intricate low-level code. To evade this trap, we propose to extend the middleware platform with new aspect-oriented modeling...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: AOSD
• Authors: Ömer Erdem Demir, Premkumar T. Devanbu, Eric Wohlstadter, Stefan Tai
• Keywords: AOSD 2007, Middleware Layers, Middleware Platform, Software Engineering, Typical Middleware Platform