Middleware for distributed multimedia (panel): need a new direction?

Abstract

This panel is motivated by three emerging trends: (1) multimedia applications represent an important class ‘of distributed and networking applications; (2) middleware has become a valuable software layer/system which allows users to develop large complex distributed applications without having to deal with details of underlying networking and operating system; and (3) object-oriented methodology has matured to the point that it has become a De-facto standard for software design and development. The last two trends also explain rapidly increasing commercial interest in OMG’s proposed middleware standard Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and associated Object Request Broker (ORB) implementations. It is claimed that distributed object oriented middleware eliminates many tedious, error-prone and non-portable aspects of developing and maintaining distributed applications by automating common network programming tasks such as object location, object activation, parameter marshaling, fault recovery, and security. These three trends together motivate a need for an Object-Oriented middleware that can especially support distributed and networked multimedia applications. Several groups have already initiated efforts aimed at extending CORBA and associated ORBS to make them more suitable for multimedia applications. Others argue that multimedia applications have different requirements in that they require periodic processing and transmission of continuous streams of data, and that CORBA is the wrong middleware to extend for distributed multimedia applications.