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Table of Contents
The above is a panorama taken by the MARS Curiosity Rover
Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Platform Task Force (PTF)
Mission
To solicit, evaluate, and select specifications for recommendation to the Platform Technology Committee for adoption by the OMG (http://www.omg.org/) in the areas of:
- Request Broker Technology - including but not limited to Object Request Brokers (CORBA), Message-Oriented Brokers and other technologies that are the target implementation contexts for Platform Independent Services and their Mappings.
- General purpose Pervasive Services that are either:
- Fundamental for developing useful distributed applications
- Provide a universal basis for Application Integration and Information Integration, or
- Support higher-level facilities and frameworks
Mappings for such Pervasive Services to specific middleware platforms, and reference mappings from generic PIM constructs to platform-specific constructs and protocol rules.Supporting Technologies for Application Integration, Information Integration, and CollaborationCo-Chairs
Name Charlotte Wales Virginie Watine Company The MITRE Corporation T H A L E S Email charwing@mitre.org virginie.watine@fr.thalesgroup.com Working Groups (WGs)
To paraphrase the MARS home page, MARS hosts a number of WGs, serving as MARS' technology incubators. The members of a WG meet to explore specific technologies, e.g., prepare and review responses to RFIs, present their findings to the TF or as a published green papers, and prepare Draft RFPs. There are 5 active working groups at this time:
- Software Defined Networks (SDN) Working Group (Chartered March 2013)
- Wiki: http://www.omgwiki.org/sdn/doku.php; Maillist: [email protected]
- This WG holds meetings every month. When the meeting month does not co-incide with the OMG TC's quarterly meeting, the meeting location is communicated using their maillist.
High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) Working Group (Chartered March 2012)- Wiki: http://www.omgwiki.org/hpec/; Maillist: [email protected]
- Two RFCs – for VSIPL and VSIPL++ successfully issued, adopted, and released as formal OMG specs
- This WG meets quarterly, co-located with the OMG TC quarterly meeting once or twice a year.
Information Exchange Framework (Information Exchange Framework (IEF) Working Group) Working Group (Chartered December 2005)- Wiki: http://www.omgwiki.org/mars/doku.php?id=ief; maillist: [email protected]
- Working from a roadmap for specifications to be developed (not just in MARS) to address the areas of policy based information exchange. Of three RFPs planned, two were issued. The IEF Policy Based Packaging Vocabulary (IEPPV) specification was adopted in December 2013 and is under finalization.
Rich Internet Application (RIA) Working Group (Chartered December 2009)- RIA Dynamic Component Model RFP issued in March 2013. Initial Submission expected in September 2014.
IDL Profiles Working Group (Chartered March 2009)- Maillist: [email protected]
- Vision Statement: mars/09-06-04 (http://www.omg.org/members/cgi-bin/doc?mars/09-06-04.pdf)
- IDL 3.5 successfully issued as an RFC and is a formal specification; preparations for IDL 4.0 are underway.
MARS has two other working groups that are currently on hiatus.
- Dynamic Deployment Configuration (DDC) Working Group (chartered September 2010)
- The Object Database Technologies (Object Database Technology (ODBT) Working Group) Working Group (chartered September 2003; suspended since March 2009)
As needed, these WGs can be re-activated as is or re-purposed. Also as needed, new WGs can be created.
For more information go to their respective wiki pages. To subscribe to the maillists for each WG, send an email to [email protected] or refer to this site http://www.omg.org/members/mailinglists.html
News From Recent TC Meetings (and looking ahead)
- Continuing and new Technology Processes
- IEF Reference Architecture RFP: http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?mars/2014-3-17. The specification resulting from this technology process will provide not just the framework (reference architecture and model) but also the supporting materials with which to steer the overall IEF effort, e.g., define/position future RFPs.
- Unified Component Model (UCM) for Distributed Real-Time and Embedded Systems: Four initial submissions were reviewed and the process of consolidating each submitter's approach initiated. The end result of this technology process will be a simple, lightweight, middleware-agnostic, and flexible component model with support for different interaction models, including publish-subscribe and request-reply.
Refer to the OMG Technical Meeting Resource Hub for the MARS report which provides more details on the work done in Reston and our plans for the meeting in Berlin, Germany (June 2015): http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?mars/2015-03-27 (OMG member only access)When available, the agenda for the Berlin meeting will be posted here: http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/tc/agendas/berlin-15/MARS.pdf.MARS Technology Roadmap
The latest MARS Roadmap can be found at the MARS home page http://mars.omg.org. Two versions are posted:
- A public version that requires no password to open. It provides links to issued RFPs, RFCs, and RFIs and adopted submissions (adopted during the current and previous year); all material available to the public. Published as a PDF file only.
- A member's only version that needs a userid and password to access. Published in two formats: an editable Excel file and a nominally non-editable PDF file.
Reproduced below is the OMG technology process as captured in the MARS Roadmap.
As of December 2014, both include a Statistics tab, which contains graphical depictions of the Cumulative Technology Process State and MARS Technology Process State by Year. Both work with data recorded since November 2002 and are updated after each TC meeting.
Useful Links
MARS collaborates with a number of other Task Forces (C4I, Robotics, Systems Assurance, Government) and SIGs (DDS, Telecoms, Ontology). For example:
- The IEF WG represents a collaboration between MARS and C4I with as needed involvement of Gov DTF and Ontology PSIG. IEF WG maintains an active dialog with Gov DTF's Info Sharing WG. As needed, the two WGs also meet jointly during the TC meeting week.
- DDS PSIG serves as the incubator for the many DDS related technology processes handled by MARS and active in the IDL Profiles WG.
- Any technology processes relating to security (e.g., DDS Security) are developed with input from and in collaboration with the Systems Assurance PTF.
Links to the respective home pages for these TFs and SIGs are provided below:
- C4I (Consultation, Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence) DTF: http://c4i.omg.org/
- Robotics DTF: http://robotics.omg.org/
- Systems Assurance PTF: http://sysa.omg.org/
- Government DTF: http://gov.omg.org/
- Data Distribution Services (DDS) PSIG: http://portals.omg.org/dds/
- Ontology PSIG: http://ontology.omg.org/
- Telecoms PSIG: http://telecom.omg.org/
Other links:
- MARS TF home page: http://mars.omg.org
- Available OMG Specifications: http://www.omg.org/spec/
- OMG Technical Meeting Resource Hub, an excellent resource for all Technical Committee (TC) reports and any special event presentations from previous and all past meetings (back to September 2003): http://www.omg.org/members/TMResourceHub/
Note that all these sites, except for the Meeting Resource hub, are public sites .. no password required to access.