PrismTech Ships Advanced Version of OpenSplice QoS-enabled Middleware for Net-centric Systems

Compliant with the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS) open standard but providing superior functional coverage, performance, scalability and development tool support versus alternative implementations

Network Centric Warfare Conference, Washington, DC, USA – 22 January, 2007 – PrismTech™, a leading provider of advanced software platforms and tools, today announced a new release of its DDS-compliant middleware, OpenSplice™ v2.2.

In a large class of net-centric systems, real-time availability of information is of utmost importance. Information generated from multiple sources must be distributed and made available to 'interested parties' taking into account Quality of Service (QoS) offerings by information-producers and requests by information-consumers. Especially in real-time and mission-critical systems, getting 'the right data at the right time at the right place’ is not a trivial task. In order to address this need the Object Management Group (OMG™) defined the DDS specification which provides a set of profiles that target real-time information-availability for domains ranging from small-scale embedded control systems up to large-scale enterprise information management systems.

Offering much more than traditional publish-subscribe messaging middleware, PrismTech believes that its new OpenSplice v2.2 product is the most scalable, feature-rich, reliable and flexible implementation of the OMG’s DDS specification.

The latest version of OpenSplice provides superior performance and scalability when it really matters. OpenSplice v2.2 includes optimizations for all the DDS-specified profiles, as well as introducing ‘network-partitions’ (each characterized by a multicast group) which are dynamically mapped on logical ‘DDS-partitions’ (using the Partition QoS policy). OpenSplice also supports multiple network-interfaces for transparent forwarding of DDS-data and/or fault tolerant communication paths between nodes. Finally, it provides a unique real-time network-scheduler that schedules network-traffic based upon DDS QoS-policies such as ‘latency-budget’ (urgency-indicator allowing transparent packing of information) and ‘transport_priority’ (importance indicator allowing high-priority information to pre-empt less important information). PrismTech therefore believes that OpenSplice’s optimized implementation delivers architectural advantages over other DDS implementations, to provide superior performance in real world deployment scenarios - not just simple small-message, publish/subscribe tests. This superior scalability without loss of performance includes:
• ‘Intra-nodal scalability’ – running many applications on a single machine
• ‘System scalability’ – running many applications on many machines
• ‘Network scalability’ – dynamic mapping of logical DDS partitions on physical multicast groups.

Already renowned for its DDS completeness and compliance in earlier releases, OpenSplice v2.2 adds further new features to deliver even more complete functional coverage of the DDS specification. The product supports all of the DCPS (Data-Centric Publish Subscribe) profiles including the information-management profiles (‘content-subscription profile’ and ‘persistence profile’), that provide unique features to lower application-complexity, increase system performance and provide fault-tolerant availability of information (without relying on the presence of any applications). The new release also is the world’s first DDS-implementation to support the DLRL (Data Local Reconstruction Layer) object-profile, offering the advantages of an object-oriented programming interface to application developers allowing data-encapsulation, inheritance and object-navigation.

OpenSplice v2.2 also delivers software tooling that is differentiated from other DDS implementation’s tooling by its dynamic capabilities, not only to connect remote OpenSplice systems at runtime, but also to create, discover and tune any DDS entities ‘on-the-fly’. These features are possible thanks to OpenSplice’s optimized architecture (where all information, both data as well as meta-data is accessible by the tooling). This new version also includes ‘OpenSplice configurator’, a generation and management tool for the OpenSplice XML-based configuration features. This intuitive, user-friendly tool enables developers to select and setup the OpenSplice pluggable services for real-time networking, fault-tolerant persistence and remote monitoring and control.

Often DDS technologies need to be deployed in conjunction with other standards-based middleware technologies, for example in implementations of the Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE). Consequently, OpenSplice v2.2 is fully compatible with PrismTech’s other middleware technologies. This allows PrismTech to deliver a single-vendor, integrated and standards-based middleware solution (DDS, CORBA®, Security and SDR) when required for QoS-enabled net-centric systems.

“Added to an already mature and field-proven product, these new features will help ensure that PrismTech continues to offer a superior DDS implementation to our customers,” said Hans van’t Hag, OpenSplice Product Manager, PrismTech.

Further information about OpenSplice is available from PrismTech’s website at http://www.prismtech.com/middleware.

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About PrismTech
PrismTech is an acknowledged leader in the provision of state-of-the-art software platforms and tools that help developers of standards-based, carrier-class systems to: minimize time-to-market, reduce costs, and improve quality and reliability. The Company provides network infrastructure code, development tools, and services for applications from wide-scale integration to embedded Real-time systems for markets such as: Telecomm Operations Support, Defence C3I, and Software-Defined Radio. PrismTech’s customers constitute an impressive list of major systems integrators, network equipment providers and other OEMs, including many Fortune Global 500 companies. PrismTech was founded in 1992 and is a privately-held group with its US operations based in Boston, MA and Saddlebrook, NJ, and European operations in the UK, Germany, Netherlands and France. For additional information about PrismTech, visit the web site at http://www.prismtech.com.

Press Contact:
PrismTech
Gregg Shenton
E-mail: gregg.shenton@prismtech.com

OpenSplice is a trademark of PrismTech. CORBA is a registered trademark of the Object Management Group, Inc in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.