Middleware with generic communication media layer
- by Tom
Greetings all,
I'm trying to implement middleware (driver) for an embedded device with generic communication media layer. Not sure what is the best way to do it so I'm seeking an advice from more experienced stackoverflow users:). Basically we've got devices around the country communicating with our servers (or a pda/laptop in used in field). Usual form of communication is over TCP/IP, but could be also using usb, RF dongle, IR, etc. The plan is to have object corresponding with each of these devices, handling the proprietary protocol on one side and requests/responses from other internal systems on the other.
The thing is how create something generic in between the media and the handling objects. I had a play around with the TCP dispatcher using boost.asio but trying to create something generic seems like a nightmare :). Anybody tried to do something like that? What is the best way how to do it?
Example: Device connects to our Linux server. New middleware instance is created (on the server) which announces itself to one of the running services (details are not important). The service is responsible for making sure that device's time is synchronized. So it asks the middleware what is the device's time, driver translates it to device language (protocol) and sends the message, device responses and driver again translates it for the service. This might seem as a bit overkill for such a simple request but imagine there are more complex requests which the driver must translate, also there are several versions of the device which use different protocol, etc. but would use the same time sync service. The goal is to abstract the devices through the drivers to be able to use the same service to communicate with them.
Another example: we find out that the remote communications with the device are down. So we send somebody out with PDA, he connects to the device using USB cable. Starts up the application which has the same functionality as the timesync service. Again middleware instance is created (on the PDA) to translate communication between application and the device this time only using USB/serial media not TCP/IP as in previous example.
I hope it makes more sense now :)
Cheers,
Tom
