StarBus+: Distributed object middleware practice for Internet computing

In the past decade, the booming of Internet challenges the middleware in three aspects: quality of service, balance of changes and stabilization, and across-Internet integration. This paper presents our work on distributed object computing middleware technology for these challenges, as well as the research and development on StarBus+, which is a CORBA standard-compliant middleware suite with the features such as object request broker supporting multi-* quality of service, component model, and integration with Web Service. This paper comprehensively presents the design and characteristics of StarBus+, and demonstrates how StarBus+ is enhanced to address the challenges of Internet computing through three case studies: inter-enterprise integration over Internet, application evolution through dynamic reconfiguration, and great massive information system building. The paper also suggests some research directions which are important for Internet computing.