Authors:
Joe Kaylor
;
Konstantin Läufer
and
George K. Thiruvathukal
Affiliation:
Loyola University Chicago, United States
Keyword(s):
Embedded systems, Environmental monitoring, Green computing, Linux, OpenWrt, Programming languages, Representational state transfer, Resource oriented computing, REST, Software frameworks.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Ad Hoc Networks
;
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Communication and Software Infrastructure
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Distributed Architectures
;
e-Business
;
Embedded Communications Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Mobile Software and Services
;
Pervasive Computing
;
Programming Languages
;
Sensor Networks
;
Service-Oriented Computing
;
Services
;
Software Architectures
;
Software Engineering
;
Telecommunications
;
Wireless Information Networks
;
Wireless Information Networks and Systems
Abstract:
In this position paper, we provide a preliminary assessment of hardware and software solution stack choices available to developers of resource-oriented web services on commodity embedded devices. As part of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project on air and water quality in a major urban ecosystem, we are developing an information infrastructure amounting to a role-based hierarchy of individually addressable, interconnected resources, ranging from sensors, analyzers, and other monitoring devices to aggregators and
publishers. This infrastructure follows the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural pattern and integrates non-networked or non-RESTful monitoring devices through RESTful proxy resources running on low-cost, low-energy, possibly wireless, always-on embedded servers. Commodity wireless routers running a suitable embedded Linux distribution are a good choice for this purpose, and we have started to survey the landscape of supported solution stacks, includi
ng programming languages and RESTful frameworks: Not only were our preferred, familiar choices unavailable for medium-end routers, but we had to develop our own lightweight REST layer for lower-end routers. Given the growing popularity of embedded Linux devices, however, we argue that programming language designers and framework architects should support them to a much greater extent than they do now. In addition, as the demand for green computing grows, we argue that memory- and processor-efficient languages and frameworks become increasingly important.
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