Implementing a generic component-based framework for tele-control applications

Abstract

The rapid growth of distributed systems is one of the major facts in today's network-oriented community. The implementation of generic frameworks, consisting of reusable components that can be used for the development of such systems is a necessity. There is a plethora of applications that can be developed in a distributed environment, such as audio/video tele-conferencing, groupware and collaborative computing environments, remote controlled services, etc. In this paper we design and implement a generic framework of components that can be used for the realization of Tele-Control applications. This category of applications focuses particularly on the issues of managing distributed units on remote end-systems. Such applications contain remote and administrative units that are connected and exchange data and control messages. In the analysis of our framework, we used UML for the specification, analysis and presentation of system operations. The distributed units of our framework are using XML messages and TCP channels for exchanging data and control messages. We implement a communication "protocol" that contains the basic messages that can be used in Tele-Control Systems. Finally, we are presenting two different applications, which are implemented by reusing the generic components of our framework.