A message-based interoperability framework with application to astrophysics

Many software applications in astrophysics lack the capabilities to directly exchange data or share their functionality. The proposed framework utilizes a light-weight messaging technique based on the Simple Application Messaging Protocol (SAMP) to enable software to participate in a collaborative system by sharing data and services between one another. A built-in mechanism allows users to non-programmatically create shared services based on application-internal functionality. The messaging components establish communication, handle the service propagation and discovery phases, and manage the service requests between participating applications. The effort needed to integrate the framework into existing applications is minimized by insourcing all application-independent processes and by offering language-specific handlers that can be used to interface with the framework within the host-application itself. The feasibility of the proposed framework is analyzed by integrating it into SolarSoftware (SSW) and JHelioviewer, simulating a typical use-case scenario.