Design of Information Channels for Mission - Critical Systems by Brian

Current mission critical systems are distributed client-server applications written in C/C++, designed to work for a specific hardware or software vendor. These systems generally are not portable and do not permit the easy addition and modification of modules. The vision for these mission critical systems is a web/browser-enabled system that is vendor and operating system independent, and allows the easy addition and modification of system components. This paper examines using the Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI) to achieve this vision. The JBI is a distributed component architecture that uses the publish/subscribe paradigm. It is unique in that it makes the flow of information through the system explicit by expressing the system as a set of information channels from the data sources to clients. The results showed that the JBI can be used to successfully "web-enable" current mission critical systems. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Amar Gupta Title: Co-Director, Productivity From Information Technology Initiative Sloan School of Management