A Reference Architecture for Push Systems

Popular Internet information systems like the World-wide Web still require the user to actively locate and retrieve information which is a time-consuming and tedious task. Push systems try to remedy this by reversing the communication pattern: information is actively disseminated to users. A large number of push systems is already available and these systems are gaining wide-spread use. The purpose of this paper is to present a reference architecture for such systems. It describes the general concepts, abstractions (broadcasting, channel), and components (broadcaster, receiver, transport system) of push systems. The properties and relations of components are presented and the main issues to be addressed by push architectures are discussed: scalability, network traffic, security, and ecommerce. Since push systems can allow executable content, the relations with mobile code systems are considered. A brief discussion of existing systems in respect to the reference architecture rounds out the paper.