RTI Connext DDS – Connectivity Platform for Industrial IoT

The Data Distribution Service is a middleware protocol and API standard for data-centric connectivity from the Object Management Group (OMG).  It integrates the components of a system together, providing low-latency data connectivity, extreme reliability, and a scalable architecture that business and mission-critical Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications need.

DDS fosters the development of loosely coupled modular and open architecture systems.  By supporting well-defined interfaces between components and subsystems, DDS eradicates stovepipe, closed and proprietary architectures.  This eliminates complexity to reduce integration, maintenance and upgrade costs; promotes competition at the subsystem and middleware levels; and eases reuse.

• Portability – DDS was designed from the start to support any programming language.  It is the only standard messaging API for C and C++; it also supports Java, C#, Ada, JMS, WSDL/SOAP and REST/HTTP interfaces.
• Wire interoperability – The DDS Real-Time Publish-Subscribe (RTPS) wire protocol provides seamless interoperability across implementations, platforms and programming languages.
• Semantic interoperability – Applications communicate by exchanging discoverable data objects typically described by a standard data model.  The data model can be specified using the OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL), XSD/WSDL, XML or a programmatic interface.  It can also be generated from a Unified Modelling Language model.
• Many implementations – At least 10 unique middleware implementations support the DDS API or wire protocol.

DDS standardises powerful messaging semantics that reduce development and integration costs while improving system scalability and robustness.

• Data-centricity – Data-centric publish/subscribe messaging provides loose coupling, reduces application and integration logic, and scales to systems of systems.
• Performance – DDS supports the full range of performance requirements from enterprise to high-performance real-time systems.  DDS implementations outperform implementation of other standards by up to 3,000 times.  Connext DDS consistently outperforms other DDS solutions.
• QoS – DDS defines a comprehensive set of Quality of Service (QoS) policies.  These provide control over dynamic discovery, content-aware routing and filtering, fault tolerance and deterministic real-time behaviour.

DDS is a truly open standard.  The OMG is one of the largest computer industry consortiums with hundreds of member organizations including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat and Tibco.  In addition to DDS, OMG manages the Unified Modelling Language and other popular software standards.  Any organisation can join and participate in the OMG standardisation process.  Adopted standards are freely available on the OMG web site.

The Connext Product Suite simplifies application and integration logic with a powerful data-centric model, providing:

• Performance – Exceeds stringent real-time requirements and distributes high volumes of data with low latency.
• Security – Provides fine-grained security through standardized authentication, encryption and access control.
• Scalability – Integrates software modules and teams. Discovers data and devices automatically allowing for ease of system scalability.
• Reliability – Delivers nonstop availability with no single point of failure. Ideal for mission-critical systems.