Data Distribution Service

Data Distribution Service for Real-time Systems (DDS) is a specification of a publish/subscribe middleware for distributed systems created in response to the need to standardize a data-centric publish-subscribe programming model for distributed systems. A few proprietary DDS solutions have been available for several years, until 2004 when the two major DDS vendors, the American Real-Time Innovations and the French Thales Group teamed up to create the DDS specifications that have been approved by the Object Management Group.

Version History

* DDS 1.3 — Working version, OMG members only.
* DDS 1.2 (January 1, 2007)
* DDS 1.1 (December 4, 2005)
* DDS 1.0

The DDS specification describes two levels of interfaces:

* A lower DCPS (Data-Centric Publish-Subscribe) level that is targeted towards the efficient delivery of the proper information to the proper recipients.

* An optional higher DLRL (Data Local Reconstruction Layer) level, which allows for a simple integration of DDS into the application layer.

Architecture

DDS entities

; DomainParticipantFactory

: A singleton factory that is the main entry point to DDS.

; DomainParticipant

: Entry point for the communication in a specific domain; it represents the participation of an application in one DDS Domain. Furthermore, it acts as a factory for the creation of DDS Publishers, Subscribers, Topics, MultiTopics and ContentFilteredTopics.

; TopicDescription

: Abstract base class for Topic, ContentFilteredTopic and MultiTopic.

; Topic

: A specialization of TopicDescription that is the most basic description of the data to be published and subscribed.

; ContentFilteredTopic

: A specialized TopicDescription like the Topic that additionally allows content-based subscriptions.

; MultiTopic

: A specialization of TopicDescription like the Topic that additionally allows subscriptions to combine/filter/rearrange data coming from several topics.

; Publisher

: A Publisher is the object responsible for the actual dissemination of publications.

; DataWriter

: Allows the application to set the value of the data to be published under a given Topic.

; Subscriber

: A Subscriber is the object responsible for the actual reception of the data resulting from its subscriptions.

; DataReader

: A DataReader allows the application to declare the data it wishes to receive (by making a subscription using a Topic, ContentFilteredTopic or MultiTopic) and to access the data received by the attached Subscriber.

DDS model

DDS is networking middleware that simplifies complex network programming. It implements a publish/subscribe model for sending and receiving data, events, and commands among the nodes. Nodes that are producing information (publishers) create "topics" (e.g., temperature, location, pressure) and publish "samples." DDS takes care of delivering the sample to all subscribers that declare an interest in that topic.

DDS handles all the transfer chores: message addressing, data marshaling and demarshalling (so subscribers can be on different platforms than the publisher), delivery, flow control, retries, etc. Any node can be a publisher, subscriber, or both simultaneously.

The DDS publish-subscribe model virtually eliminates complex network programming for distributed applications.

DDS supports mechanisms that go beyond the basic publish-subscribe model. The key benefit is that applications that use DDS for their communications are entirely decoupled. Very little design time has to be spent on how to handle their mutual interactions. In particular, the applications never need information about the other participating applications, including their existence or locations. DDS automatically handles all aspects of message delivery, without requiring any intervention from the user applications, including:
* determining who should receive the messages,
* where recipients are located,
* what happens if messages cannot be delivered.

This is made possible by the fact that DDS allows the user to specify Quality of Service (QoS) parameters as a way to configure automatic-discovery mechanisms and specify the behavior used when sending and receiving messages. The mechanisms are configured up-front and require no further effort on the user's part. By exchanging messages in a completely anonymous manner, DDS greatly simplifies distributed application design and encourages modular, well-structured programs.

DDS also automatically handles hot-swapping redundant publishers if the primary fails. Subscribers always get the sample with the highest priority whose data is still valid (that is, whose publisher-specified validity period has not expired). It automatically switches back to the primary when it recovers, too. DDS is available from different vendors with Ada, C, C++, C#, and Java APIs.

See also

* Middleware
* Open architecture computing environment

External links

* [http://portals.omg.org/dds The OMG DDS portal]
* [http://www.rti.com/products/data_distribution/RTIDDS.html RTI Data Distribution Service commercial implementation]
* [http://www.prismtech.com/section-item.asp?id=175&sid=18&sid2=10 PrismTech OpenSplice DDS commercial implementation]
* [http://www.twinoakscomputing.com/coredx.php Twin Oaks Computing's CoreDX commercial DDS implementation]
* [http://www.ociweb.com/products/opendds OCI's OpenDDS open source DDS implementation]
* [http://dds.milsoft.com.tr/en/dds-home.php MilSOFT commercial implementation]
* [http://www.pocomatic.com/docs/whitepapers/corba PocoCapsule for CORBA+DDS] A framework for component-based CORBA and [http://www.pocomatic.com/docs/whitepapers/dds DDS] applications.
* [http://www.jacorb.org/ JacORB a free Java implementation of OCI's CORBA standard]
* [http://www.gallium.com/products/intercom.htm InterCOM DDS Gallium commercial implementation]