Middleware for Exchange and Validation of Context Data and Information

In Chap. 1 of this book, the notion of some type of middleware was put forward as a likely component of an architecture for Context-Enhanced Information Fusion process designs. In this chapter, the details of a proposed middleware component are elaborated, based on the consideration of the Open System of Systems (SoS) concept and the critical concerns in such an SoS framework for maintaining data integrity and quality. The approach is developed in part by examining interdependencies among Information Fusion, Sensemaking and Decision Support processes as part of the Data-to-Decisions (D2D) paradigm described herein. In this framework, we describe the details of Middleware that facilitate the development of distributed systems by accommodating heterogeneity, hiding distribution details and providing a set of common and domain specific services. We specifically describe a middleware design called ProWare that delivers the data needed by individual fusion nodes based on their current information needs. A central concept of ProWare is the subscription-based data exchange model, which delivers data to a computing node only if the data has been requested by that node. In order to ensure correctness of the fusion algorithm output, the correctness of the input data is validated from the data consumer perspective.