IQ-Services: Network-Aware Middleware for Interactive Large-Data Applications

IQ-Services are application-specific, resource-aware code modules executed by data transport middleware. They constitute a 'thin' layer between application components and the underlying computational and communication resources that implements the data manipulations necessary to permit wide-area collaborations to proceed smoothly, despite dynamic resource variations. IQ-Services interact with the application and resource layers via dynamic performance attributes, and end-to-end implementations of such attributes also permit clients to interact with data providers. Joint middleware/resource and provider/consumer interactions implement a cooperative approach to data management for the large-data applications targeted by our research. Experimental results in this paper demonstrate substantial performance improvements attained by coordinating network-level with service-level adaptations of the data being transported and by permitting end users to dynamically deploy and use application-specific services for manipulating data in ways suitable for their current needs