MEMS: a method for evaluating middleware architectures

  • Authors:

  • Yan Liu;Ian Gorton;Len Bass;Cuong Hoang;Suhail Abanmi

  • Affiliations:

  • National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia & School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia;National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia & School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia;Software Engineering Institute;Engineering Faculty, University of Technology, Sydney;National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia & School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia

  • Venue:
  • QoSA'06 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Quality of Software Architectures
  • Year:
  • 2006

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Middleware architectures play a crucial role in determining the overall quality of many distributed applications. Systematic evaluation methods for middleware architectures are therefore important to thoroughly assess the impact of design decisions on quality goals. This paper presents MEMS, a scenario-based evaluation approach. MEMS provides a principled way of evaluating middleware architectures by leveraging generic qualitative and quantitative evaluation techniques such as prototyping, testing, rating, and analysis. It measures middleware architectures by rating multiple quality attributes, and the outputs aid the determination of the suitability of alternative middleware architectures to meet an application’s quality goals. MEMS also benefits middleware development by uncovering potential problems at early stage, making it cheaper and quicker to fix design problems. The paper describes a case study to evaluate the security architecture of grid middleware architectures for managing secure conversations and access control. The results demonstrate the practical utility of MEMS for evaluating middleware architectures for multiple quality attributes.