Implementing Configurable Signalling

The task of middleware is to mask out problems of heterogeneity and distribution for application developers. With the emergence of new application domains, like multimedia and real-time applications, flexible support of QoS and real-time requirements becomes a major challenge. Reconfigurable bindings and policy driven binding protocols are the major means in the MULTE framework to support these requirements. Our experience with flexible protocol configuration has shown that the above requirements cannot be solved only by dynamic (re-)configuration of communication protocols. Additionally, flexibility in establishing and managing bindings is necessary. We have implemented a toolkit that allows configurable signalling, including tasks such as QoS negotiation, resource reservation, connection management, monitoring, etc. The toolkit is used in the MULTE-ORB to support various functional and non-functional application requirements