"MOM as Dissertation Topic [C²I² Press Release, 1998-10-21]"

Manie Steyn, an engineer from real-time, mission-critical networks specialist, C²I² Systems, proposes to determine the networking requirements set by real-time distributed applications for message-orientated middleware (MOM) in his MSc(Eng) Dissertation.

APIS (Application Interface Services) is a real-time mission-critical MOM developed by C²I² Systems for military and industrial use. In these environments, APIS facilitates reliable communication between various sub-systems within larger distributed systems, by abstracting low-level network complexities.

MOM is a specific class of network application layer software that operates on the principles of message passing. It is characterised by a peer-to-peer distributed computing model supporting by synchronous and asynchronous interaction between distributed computing processes.

"MOM generally provides high-level services," says Steyn, "creating an infrastructure to support very reliable, scaleable and performance-orientated distributed network applications in heterogeneous environments.

"APIS’s transport services are provided by the Xpress Transport Protocol (XTP) while the physical layer is based on a high performance LAN technology such as FDDI, ATM or Fibre Channel.

"The off-board host communication architecture provides for parallelism between the user application running on the host and APIS running on a local processor. It also establishes a functionally-decoupled interfacing environment between the service provider and user, which provides for a more reliable integration of the user’s application and the network".

In addition, Steyn proposes to test and analyse APIS’s performance, particularly with regard to the added complexity of the MOM aspect.

"My proposed research work will :

Investigate the networking requirements of real-time, mission-critical distributed systems
Perform latency and throughput measurements with respect to network loading, message length and message loading
Draw conclusions on the suitability of APIS as a real-time network application.

"At the end of the day, I hope to be able to recommend changes which will enhance the performance of APIS."