MADAMS: A software architecture for the management of networked measurement services B Franco Cicirelli * , Angelo Furfaro, Domenico Grimaldi, Libero Nigro, Francesco Pupo Laboratorio di Ingegneria del Software, Dipartimento di Elettronica Informatica e Sistemistica, Universita ` della Calabria, I-87036 Rende (CS), Italy Received 28 February 2005; accepted 28 April 2005 Available online 12 July 2005 Abstract MADAMS (Management Architecture for Distributed meAsureMent Services) is a novel service-based software framework designed for publishing, retrieving, configuring, setting up, monitoring and executing distributed measurement services over the Internet. The basic building block is the measurement service, i.e. a software object properly configured and made remote accessible across a network. A measurement service corresponds either to a single (virtual or physical) instrument, or to a collection of measurement services abstracting a test method. Service attributes include the graphical interface which supports user interactions. MADAMS is especially tuned to: (i) defining a common way to manage and use distributed measurement services, (ii) introducing a data-exchange layer for inter-instrument communications, (iii) exploiting a design pattern which separates definition of service functionalities from distribution concerns. This paper introduces MADAMS, outlines its current implementation which depends on Java/Jini, and shows its application to a demand monitoring–control measurement system. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Networked measurement systems; Services; Middleware; Jini; JavaSpaces; Internet 1. Introduction The rapid growth, diffusion and reduction in cost of network related resources, e.g. bandwidth and standard protocols, make it possible to develop and deploy powerful Networked Measurement Sys- tems (NMS) [1–12]. Such systems are typically based on a decentralized networked architecture with the goal of monitoring (e.g. gathering, proces- sing or visualizing) data originated by generic mea- surement processes and (possibly) controlling the processes themselves. An NMS can be specialized to cope with problems related to distributed or remote devices under test, intelligent or adaptive measurement systems, contin- uous or schedulable or long-term measurements, mea- 0920-5489/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.csi.2005.04.003 B A preliminary version of this paper was presented at IEEE In- strumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (IMTC’04), Como (Italy), May 2004. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: f.cicirelli@deis.unical.it (F. Cicirelli), a.furfaro@deis.unical.it (A. Furfaro), grimaldi@deis.unical.it (D. Grimaldi), l.nigro@unical.it (L. Nigro), f.pupo@unical.it (F. Pupo). Computer Standards & Interfaces 28 (2006) 396– 411 www.elsevier.com/locate/csi