2015 10th International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing

On Cloud Computing Middleware Architecture

Jihua Yang,Longjun Zhang, Xu An Wang

The Graduate Management Team of Engineering University of CAPF, Xi’an 710086

499295386@qq.com

Abstract ̾ Today, the cloud computing has been an important Besides, the PaaS is also called sharing middleware which
platform for various resources and sharing. But at present, many makes the Java EE AS, the message-oriented middleware, the
cloud computing platforms have not used the service-oriented EPM, the ESB and the portal server virtual. And it can
system architecture, which could bring about more flexibility, integrate many middlewares into a resource pool of
higher extendibility and reusability. The cloud computing has application foundation which offers users a high-end
always been an important computing platform for sharing various
resources including infrastructures, software, operation procedures
environment for developing, testing and operating the
and application programs. The cloud computing middleware is just application. This allows users to have a better application of
the key to the service-oriented step in the computing. If PaaS is the the cloud computing
core of the cloud computing system, then the middleware is the core
of PaaS. The cloud computing platform is closely related to the II. THE PAAS PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE
middleware technology. Therefore, the middleware is the backbone
of the cloud computing platform. The PaaS is a business model that offers the server
platform as service. PaaS is the tendency of SaaS(Software-as-
Key words ̾ Cloud computing, Cloud Computing Middleware, a-Service). PaaS can bring about more personalized services
Resources Sharing, Cloud Computing Service with higher performance. If a SaaS software on the internet
can also provides the function of developing (user-defined),
testing and deploying on line application, then it is called the
As the Information Age goes faster, users’ needs and the Platform-as-a-Service, namely, the PaaS.
needed efficiency are increasing day by day. The hardware
configuration such as the computer has been promoted which There are various kinds of technologies in the PaaS. The
increases the cost. At the same time, the partial application has following five are very popular:
left resources waste and the unused. But, the cloud computing
(1)REST.the Representational State Transfer Technology,
not only can integrate resources effectively, but can plan and
can conveniently offer part of the service supporting by the
manage this hardware resource uniformly. That is to distribute
middleware to callers.
resources equitably based on costumers’ needs. The general
orientation of the cloud computing platform is that the user (2)Multiple tenants. It can make one individual system
can make use of rich resources and the strong hardware in work for many organizations with good isolation and better
support to deal with larger-scaled computing problems at any safety. This technology can effectively reduce the purchase
time and any place. The middleware is the service-oriented and maintenance cost of the application.
system architecture of the cloud computing platform.
Therefore, the middleware is a necessary part of the platform. (3)Parallel processing. It can process mass data.
(4)Application server. Based on the original AS, it is
optimized for the cloud computing system.
I. THE MIDDLEWARE HAS BEEN “THE BACKBONE” IN
THE CLOUD COMPUTING AGE
(5)Distributed cache. This distributed cache can not only
effectively reduce the pressure of background, but increase the
response speed.
There are various types of cloud services. Now some
popular cloud services are IaaS, PaaS and SaaS: the
Infrastructure-as-a-Service which provides users with
computing, storing and other basic resources; the Platform-as-
a-Service by which users can establish and operate various
operation systems on the PaaS; the Software-as-a-Service
which directly offers users email, business administration and
other business applications. In the whole cloud computing
system, PaaS plays the role of calling basic resources from the
bottom layer and providing support for operation systems of
the upper layer. It is the key whether the cloud computing
could fall to the ground. )LJThe overall architecture of the PaaS

978-1-4673-9473-4 /15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE 832

DOI 10.1109/3PGCIC.2015.46
 III. THE MIDDLEWARE OF THE CLOUD COMPUTING
The so-called “middleware”, means the software in the
“intermediate zone” of the system. Vertically, from the
dimension of “up and down”, the middleware lies in the
middle from the ground floor operation system, the database
and other basic software to the internet applications of the top
layer. Downward, it manages the computing resources and the
network communication. Upward, it offers exploitation and
operation environment for internet applications. Horizontally,
from the dimension of “left and right”, the middleware
provides communication and exchange services for various
businesses to solve the interconnection problem between
systems. Therefore, the middleware is an important hub to
support the efficient operation of IT system. This
characteristic coincides with PaaS of the Cloud Computing.
The middleware includes the application middleware and
the integration middleware. The key point of the middleware
is to form the middleware resource pool and the application
container, the computing resource and computing unit which
can be managed and dispatched. The integration middleware
consists of many aspects such as the data integration and the
application integration. The data integration includes ETL,
ODI and so on. While the ESB service bus is the center of the
application integration which can integrate business services
of the corporation and offer unified directory services.
IV. THE CLOUD COMPUTING AND THE SOA
Cloud computing is a kind of service model, which can
provide services of different types and levels and adapt
different methods according to different services. However, all
the services are in accordance with the model of resource
centralized management and users’ application according to
their needs, which is the core concept of cloud computing. The
concept is actually also a concept that faces services. SOA is a
component module, which sends the application program as
service to the users or other services, and connect them
through good interfaces.
How to understand SOA correctly? In fact, the concept of
SOA has existed in China since an early time, which was
known as printing at that time. The development of printing
completely presented the core concepts of SOA. The content
of printing is character. Before the first Emperor Qin unified
the other six countries, the characters of the six countries were
different. Most of the staple pronunciation and literary styles
were different, which caused the communication obstacles
between different countries. Just like before the SOA, there
was no unified standard between various software platforms,
development instruments and interfaces, which caused a huge
difficulty to the integration of software systems. Therefore,
Emperor Qin began to unify the character. “One Chinese
character, one railway” was to deal with the problems of
“multiplexing” and “inter-operate” through standards. This
laid a solid foundation for the large scale printing and the
development of civilization. The “unified” character played a
normal role of “inter-operate” to cultural communication.
The service can be divided into service providers and
service consumers. The service consumers submit the service
request through interfaces, and the service providers
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accomplish relevant works and hand in the eventual results to
the service consumers. There is an obvious difference between
the “service” of cloud computing and that of SOA. The
“service” in cloud computing refers to the various functions
and resources provided by cloud computing, while the
“service” of SOA refers to a unit of software function.
Therefore, the “service” of cloud computing covers a wider
area than that of SOA, and it includes the “service” of SOA.
SOA can be regarded as a method to provide the service
integration for cloud computing. The service providers remain
in the center of cloud computing and follow the standards of
SOA interfaces, while the service consumers access the
service at any place through internet and hit the target of
providing services. Meanwhile, SOA can be used as the
integration of internal components of cloud computing and the
alternation of information. Therefore, as a method of
component integration, SOA can completely be applied into
cloud computing.
)LJThe sketch map between SaaS and SOA
V. BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE SOA ARCHITECTURE OF
THE CLOUD COMPUTING MIDDLEWARE
In order to make a complete understanding of SOA, we
must firstly understand the core factor of SOA: Standard
packaging, reusing and loose coupling arrangeable.
Standard Packaging (interoperability)
Due to the dependency of technology and platform of
packaging, the traditional software structure has never
thoroughly solved the problem of interoperability. The
unprecedented openness of internet means that each node may
adapt different components and platform technology. It
restricts the technology details privately and there is no unified
standard in component module and infrastructure, which leads
to the tremendous isomerism of infrastructure itself in fields
such as component description, release, discovery, invocation,
interoperability protocol and data transmission. Various
undesirable technology restrictions result in the huge difficulty
of the alternation from software system to internet, which
eventually leads to stiff progress of operation integration and
restructuring. In the interoperability fields of software, the
traditional middleware just achieves the access interoperability,
while the link interoperability depends on special access
protocols such as JAVA use RMI. SOA achieves the link
interoperability through standard SOAP protocol that supports
the internet and has no relation with operation system. Besides,
the service packaging adopts XML protocol and possesses the
property of self-analyze and self-definition. In this way, the
middleware which bases on SOA can achieve semantic
interoperability. Through a series of standards to achieve the
interoperability of access, link and the semantic can SOA
achieve interoperability.
A. The Coupling Relationship
The SOA structure develops into the last realm in the
process of loosing coupling and decoupling. The traditional
software couples the three core sections of software, which are
known as internet link, data transmission and operation logic,
into an integration. It develops into a software of “an iron
panel” and “Pull one hair and the whole body is affected”. It is
hard for the software to adapt to the environment. The
distributed object technology separates the link logic and the
message middleware makes asynchronous processing in link
logic, which adds to flexibility. The message brokers and
some distributed object middlewares also separate the data
transmission. However, the SOA structure achieves the
complete decoupling of operation logic and internet link, as
well as data transmission through service packaging.
B. Software reuse
In other words, the re-usage of the software is also called
re-utilization. It refers to the multiple usages of the same
object without modification or with slight modification. From
the point of the development of software reuse technology, it
continues to improve the level of abstraction and enlarge the
range of the reuse. The earliest reuse technology was
subprogram. People invented the subprogram so as to reuse
among different systems. However, the subprogram was the
most primitive reuse, because the range of this kind of reuse
was the reuse within an executable program during static
development period. If the subprogram changed, it meant that
all the systems which applied this subprogram needed to be re-
compiled, re-tested and re-published. The reuse of SOA
solved this problem. People invented components (or also
called controls) such as the DLL components under the MS
operation system. The components raised up one level of the
reuse, because the components could be reused within one
system (the same operation system), and the reuse is dynamic
during operation. Components like this could be solely
developed, and the coupling degree between different
components got reduced. In order to deal with the reuse
among the distributed network computing, people invented
enterprise object components, which is also called distributed
components. Through remote object proxy, the reuse within
the enterprise network and between different systems became
true. The core of the traditional structure is the management of
component objects, but the distributed components depends
heavily on the calculating environment. Because of the major
isomerism between the implementation and the operation-
supporting techniques of the controls, controls with different
technique designs and implementations couldn’t get packaged
directed or be reused. However, the important feature of the
modern SOA is that it takes the service as the core service,
such as WebService,SCA/SDO, etc. Through service or
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service components, higher level of reuse, decoupling, and
inter-operation which is also called the SOA structure middle-
ware, become true.
VI. Characters of SOA
There are some distinct essential features during the
implement of SOA.
It can be visited outside the corporation and be used at any
time. The service interface of the coarsness grades; loose
coupling; reusable services; design control of the service
interface; standard service interface; supporting many
information patterns; accurately defined service contract.
SOA Service has dependent self-description, XML
document, of the platform. Web Services Descriptive
Language(WSDL㸧is a standard language used to describe
services.
SOA Service communicates by news which usually
defined by XML Schema(XSD㸪 XML Schema Definition).
The communication between consumers and suppliers or
between consumers and services happens mostly in an
environment unaware of the supplier. Communication
between services also can be seen as important business
documents internally processed by the corporation.
Within a corporation, SOA service can be maintained
through Registry which plays the role of directory listing. The
application program looks for and calls some service in
Registry. UDDI(Universal Description 㸪 Definition and
Integration) is the standard of service registering.
Every SOA service has a QoS (quality of service). Some
key elements of the QoS have strategies such as demand for
security (such as authentication and authorization), reliable
communication (annotation: reliable news means to make sure
that the news is sent for only one time to filter repeated news)
and strategy about who can call service.
VII. SOA System Architecture
Service is like a pile of “components and parts”, which
form the standard service by encapsulating. They have the
same connector and rules of semantic expression. However, in
order to assemble the service into a process and application,
there needs effective “management”, including how to register
the service, how to find out the service, and how to package
the safety and reliability of the service. This kind of
“management” is to effectively assemble the pile of
components and parts of the SOA, and to form the core of a
“product”. Otherwise, it will always be a pile of components
and parts, and will never form an organic entirety.
It is loose coupling among the services of the service
structure (the SOA structure). There are two good points about
the loose coupling system. One is its flexibility, and the other
is that it can continue to exist when the inner structure and
implementation of every service forming the whole
application program changes gradually. The need of the loose
coupling system comes from the business. The application
program needs to be more flexible according to the the need of
the business, so as to adapt to the changing environment. The
business which can flexibly adapt to the changing
environment is what we call the demanding business. In
demanding business, once demanded, it’s possible to do
necessary change to the way of finishing or executing the task.
Based on the difference between the construction method
of the application system of the SOA and the structural
method of the traditional software. Firstly, the components
level of the modeling and management based on the
application system of the SOA is service:
The essential feature of the application system based on
service is loose coupling. It takes the basic business function
(service encapsulating) as the basic implement unit of the
system, and then “assembles” the business application systems
through service arrangement (process management).
Compared to the previous application system, it’s oriented to
the technique components. From system program to business
process, there exists flexibility problem in both the reuse and
coupling aspects.
Service modeling is the first step, which is viewed as
service identification and granularity confirmation. Service
identification is to make sure of the list of the candidates
which can turn to be service within certain range, to make sure
of the granularity of the service, and to identify the connector
of the service.
 [4] Yao Wang qingbo. The Valuable Book of Cloud Computing [M].
)LJSOA Architecture Map
The main task of the service encapsulating period is to
give normative description to the service, which includes
functional attributes such as the input/output of information,
and multiple attributes of the service at the business level. And
also to decide the service in what form to provide services for
the outside.
Service governance is to centrally, uniformly, and
effectively manage the already well encapsulated service.
Through the ESB infrastructure, service registration, storage,
safety control and version management, etc are provided.
Service arrangement is to pack and assemble the service
according to the need of the business process. Service
assembly is based on the purpose of realizing the business
process. Through the packaging and assembling of the
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business service, business service of thicker granularity and
the final business demand become true.
The main task of the application delivery period is to finish
the servitization assembly of the business system and the
service deployment, and to realize the business on demand
delivery. The application system based on the SOA is the main
component of the SOA structure, and also the foundation of
the landing of the SOA.
VIII. Conclusion
The Cloud Computing Middleware can quickly and
effectively set up and manage the Cloud Platform by using
multilevel distributed virtual technology, intelligent system
management and auto-deployment of resources. With the help
of Cloud Computing Middleware, applicators can be set free
from the fussy, complex and distributed resource management
problem. And they can concentrate attention and money to
provide their users better services of searching, email, unit
management and so on. The Cloud Computing Middleware
integrates various computing resources effectively. It is a
necessary headstone for setting up the Cloud platform. It can
help users set up virtual service environment and help
enterprises transfer smoothly from traditional structure to the
Cloud Computing architecture by using the cloud computing
technology. This platform allows any enterprise to use
computer cluster like using one machine so that the
unimaginable before large-scale system management and mass
data processing become possible. Being use in many areas of
the society, it will bring people revolutionary changes in
working, studying and living.
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