RTI's DDS V4.5 Moves Beyond Front Office with New Messaging Adaptors and SDK

Messaging specialist Real-Time Innovations (RTI) is this week announcing version 4.5 of its Data Distribution Service middleware, extending it beyond low-latency front-office applications to support middle- and back-office applications. The release includes a software development kit (SDK) allowing the creation of adaptors to link into disparate enterprise-wide systems, as well as pre-built adaptors for TCP/IP sockets and the Java Message Service (JMS).

According to RTI's director of product management and strategy, Dr. Edwin de Jong, the new release takes the messaging product to the "next level" allowing it to be used to bridge "systems of systems."

The company says its work in this area was originally driven by its defense customers, where systems require "situational awareness." However, it is now rolling out the concept at one of it largest financial services customers, which de Jong declines to name. That customer is, however, believed to be Citibank. RTI expects customers to use the SDK to rapidly build interfaces between systems relying on proprietary protocols.

However, there is broad customer demand for support for SOAP-based Web Services and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) messaging. As well as the new adaptors and SDK, version 4.5 includes a number of other enhancements, including:

* Support for TCP/IP over wide area networks, including SSL/TLS security.
* Enhancements for multi-core processors, where I/O threads can be pinned to individual specific cores and their associated caches to reduce latency and jitter.
* Increased platform support, including Microsoft Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X.
* Support for queries on the DDS caches that are held in each network node, allowing simple SQL requests to be made of them to retrieve data to populate application databases, without requiring requests back to the data sources.
* Self-tuning of UDP communications based on latency vs throughput considerations, allowing for easier management. Version 4.5 is available now.