Observatory Middleware Framework

We are designing and prototyping a generalized Observatory Middleware Framework (OMF) to integrate existing and proposed technologies and reduce duplication of functionality across observatories. Our implementation consists of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture capable of integrating a wide variety of message-based technologies, a Security Proxy (SP) that uses X.509 credentials to sign and verify messages to and from the ESB, and an Instrument Proxy (IP) based on widely-accepted encoding and interface standards that provides common access to both MBARI-specific and native instruments. Our poster details the framework's architecture and the use case scenarios for which we are designing the prototype system. It will include a discussion of our assumptions, the choices we have made architecturally, and the implementation approach for the prototype we are producing.