Technical reports

Hermes: A scalable event-based middleware

Peter R. Pietzuch

June 2004, 180 pages

This technical report is based on a dissertation submitted February 2004 by the author for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of Cambridge, Queens’ College.

DOI: 10.48456/tr-590

Abstract

Large-scale distributed systems require new middleware paradigms that do not suffer from the limitations of traditional request/reply middleware. These limitations include tight coupling between components, a lack of information filtering capabilities, and support for one-to-one communication semantics only. We argue that event-based middleware is a scalable and powerful new type of middleware for building large-scale distributed systems. However, it is important that an event-based middleware platform includes all the standard functionality that an application programmer expects from middleware.

In this thesis we describe the design and implementation of Hermes, a distributed, event-based middleware platform. The power and flexibility of Hermes is illustrated throughout for two application domains: Internet-wide news distribution and a sensor-rich, active building. Hermes follows a type- and attribute-based publish/subscribe model that places particular emphasis on programming language integration by supporting type-checking of event data and event type inheritance. To handle dynamic, large-scale environments, Hermes uses peer-to-peer techniques for autonomic management of its overlay network of event brokers and for scalable event dissemination. Its routing algorithms, implemented on top of a distributed hash table, use rendezvous nodes to reduce routing state in the system, and include fault-tolerance features for repairing event dissemination trees. All this is achieved without compromising scalability and efficiency, as is shown by a simulational evaluation of Hermes routing.

The core functionality of an event-based middleware is extended with three higher-level middleware services that address different requirements in a distributed computing environment. We introduce a novel congestion control service that avoids congestion in the overlay broker network during normal operation and recovery after failure, and therefore enables a resource-efficient deployment of the middleware. The expressiveness of subscriptions in the event-based middleware is enhanced with a composite event service that performs the distributed detection of complex event patterns, thus taking the burden away from clients. Finally, a security service adds access control to Hermes according to a secure publish/subscribe model. This model supports fine-grained access control decisions so that separate trust domains can share the same overlay broker network.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-590,
  author =	 {Pietzuch, Peter R.},
  title = 	 {{Hermes: A scalable event-based middleware}},
  year = 	 2004,
  month = 	 jun,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-590.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-590},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-590}
}