Network-Aware Intelligent Overlay Network

The commercial web services deployment model is simply not suitable for service-based architectures (SBAs) in a tactical environment. In a commercial SBA, service providers are stable and offer near-100% availability. Moreover, their access points (URLs) do not change. In a tactical military environment, however, services are short-lived and their access points change frequently. Consider, for example, the properties that a video feed from an unmanned aircraft would have if it were implemented as a web service. One solution is to create a service broker that is responsible for tracking the location and availability of service providers. The feasibility of such a broker has been demonstrated in a J2EE environment, but the emerging Service Logic Execution Environment (SLEE) standard may offer an even better solution. This effort will study the feasibility of implementing a brokered service deployment framework in a SLEE container. It will address issues such as avoiding single points of failure and selecting services by real-time context (such as an aircraft's location). Finally, this effort will create a working prototype of such a framework and test it at a major exercise.