Middleware for Virtual Home Environments: Approaching the Architecture

Virtual Home Environments (VHE) is the concept that networks supporting mobile users should provide them with the same computing environment on the road as they are used to having in their home or corporate computing environment. Middleware for Virtual Home Environment (the VHE Middleware project) is one of the ITEA (Information Technology for European Advancement) projects. The goal of the project is to make European industry the leader in Middleware software technology for end-user terminals, with wireless connections and the corresponding infrastructure to enable VHE. The project partners are Nokia (FIN), Siemens (D), Fujitsu-Siemens (D), Orga Kartensysteme (D), Paderborn University (D), Philips (NL, B, D), Robert Bosch (D), and VTT Electronics (FIN). This publication documents the research and development of VHE Middleware carried out by VTT Electronics. In a scientific sense, a full case study evaluating an advanced method of identifying the conceptual architecture of a software system from its functional requirements is presented. The proposed method is based on the common knowledge of object-oriented analysis (OOA) methodology, which claims that every software system contains hierarchical structures that reflect its functional requirements. In OOA methodology, these structures and their hierarchies can be found by analysing and structuring the problem descriptions - the Use Case analysis. The advanced method here is how to seamlessly move from a use case model to a conceptual architecture model of the software system. User's scenarios and software prototypes of the VHE system are used as a case study. Using the proposed method, the VHE system's subsystems and layers, and their corresponding application programming interfaces (APIs), are found and the conceptual architecture of VHE Middleware drawn up. After this, the technical development of the case is extended to fully concrete the VHE Middleware architecture and its elements.