Autonomic iPOJO: Towards self-managing middleware for ubiquitous systems

The recent proliferation of ever smaller and smarter electronic devices, combined with the introduction of wireless communication and mobile software technologies enables the construction of a large variety of pervasive applications, such as home supervision and alarm systems. The inherent complexity of such applications along with their non-expert clientele raises the necessity for Autonomic Management solutions. Nonetheless, such solutions remain difficult to conceive, as they must deal with the increased volatility, heterogeneity and distribution of the pervasive domain, while ensuring stringent performance and dependability requirements. This paper proposes that reusable support for Autonomic Management solutions be provided by middleware platforms, along with already existing middleware services, such as security and transactions. Following this approach, a service oriented component platform, iPOJO, was extended with elementary Autonomic Management capabilities. These include monitoring and effector touchpoints, as well as embedded Autonomic Management functions, such as service dependency management. IPOJO is an open source Apache project and has been successfully employed to implement several research projects in the pervasive domain. This paper presents iPOJO's extension with reusable Autonomic Management middleware services.