1Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Unified Field Theory of Middleware Bob Aiken Internet Ronin Advanced Internet Initiatives Office of the CTO

2Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Middleware Workshop Co-sponsored by Cisco, IBM, iCAIR, and NSF in 12/98 ; chaired by Cisco Goal: define middlware- existing/R&D Applications, MW, & Network experts Initial focus - persistent core services

3Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. WHY Middleware ? Intelligent advanced applications mobile and nomadic environments 3D tele-immersive applications/CAVEs ubiquitous computing (BANS, PANs,..) electronic persistent presence (EPP) - “being on the net” : agents, avatars...

4Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. And the MW definition is: By a very rough ( and I mean VERY rough- IETF style - hmmmmmm) consensus - well its something sort of like - uh - like somewhere between the API and - umm - the IP transport - generally speaking that is. Its hard to say what it is - but we can recognize it if we see it - maybe.

5Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. HISTORY of Middleware first the earth cooled then there were dinosaurs then there was oil then there were Mercedes Benz then there was middleware

6Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. HISTORY of Middleware Distributed Computing 1970-present IETF RFC by IAB I-WAY / SC95 NGI 1996 R&D workshop Globus, Legion, Condor,... December 1998 MW workshop draft-aiken-middleware-reqndef-00.txt

7Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Perspectives Applications MW enabling Network Services OS and End System enabling services Security (AAA, AAAA, AAAAA,…) Networked Info Discovery and Retrieval Directories Policy - Resource Management

8Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Policy Management Model Management Tool Policy Decision Point Policy Enforcement Point Policy Repository Translation Validation Control LDAP/XML Telnet/CLI, COPS, SNMP LDAP, COPS, proprietary Entry & Viewing Modification Enabling/Disabling Admin/Mgmt Policy Conflict Resolution Satisfiability Feasibility, Optimization Traffic Conditioning Filtering Access Control Encryption

9Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. MW Research topics Inter and Intra domain policy management (policy conflict?) resource / policy management and specification languages providing infrastructure status (real time) to applications and other MW metadata - for objects/relationships/...

10Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. MW Research topics ctd PKI related MW : revocation lists, multiple certificate proxy agents multidomain accounting/billing scheduling for resources/ deadlock? support for load balancing/ mirroring New MW for Ubiquitous computing and electronic persistent presence (EPP)

11Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Summary Defining MW is like boiling the ocean No dictionary definition of MW - dependent on context / perspective NO 1 core set of middleware services that ALL applications required we identified some essential core persistent MW building blocks : directories, naming services, AAA, etc.

12Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. Summary ctd MW services (e.g. resource mgrs) will build on core sets of MW services Education Folks felt a need for a focus group to define EDU core MW services IETF Informational Draft out May 99 Do we need a forum / mechanism to focus the many activities and standards: IETF, DMTF,WWW, GRIDs, ?

13Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc.