A methodology for efficiently developing on-line tools for heterogeneous middleware

Software development is getting more and more complex, especially within distributed and heterogeneous environments based on middleware enabling the interaction of distributed components. A major drawback during the overall software development process is the lack of online tools, i.e. tools applied as soon as there is a running prototype of an application. Online tools can either be used for development tasks like debugging or visualisation of programs, or for deployment tasks like application management. For various middleware platforms, online tools have been developed, but most of them suffer from the drawbacks of being tailored to specific middleware, offering only a small set of tool functions, and not being extensible. The MIMO MIddleware MOnitor project proposes a solution to this problem. MIMO is based on a clear separation of tools, the monitoring system which collects data and controls an observed application, and the applications. The MIMO core consists of a lightweight infrastructure that allows to integrate heterogeneous middleware in a flexible way, monitor applications simultaneously using several middleware platforms, and build interoperable development and deployment tools. This paper presents a methodology for developing online tools with MIMO.