The Role of Data Centricity in Smart , Connected Systems
then group fields of that data into Topics – this defines the “ what .” Since the “ how ” and “ when ” are captured by a standards-based set of Quality of Service ( QoS ) parameters , they can be all but ignored early-on in the design process . The “ who ” portion of the design is implicit – one or more Publishers of each Topic is readily identified as producing the data , along with at least one Subscriber that consumes that data . Also implicit is the “ where ” – Publishers and Subscribers only need to be reachable by some abstract Transport , which can be Ethernet or wireless UDP , TCP , Shared Memory , or even the Internet ( WAN ).
Figure 2-3 : Data centricity designs the system around the data flow . ( Source : Real-Time Innovations ( RTI ), 2024 )
Several important design benefits are achieved by adopting a data-centric DDS approach . Since Publishers and Subscribers can be developed independently , additional Subscribers with different QoS settings can be added as the system evolves . Coping with ever-improving CPUs and network hardware is enabled by the abstraction layer , which makes data-centric designs agnostic to transport and compute resources .
3 AN INTRODUCTION TO DDS
DDS is an OMG ® open middleware standard that uses a Publish / Subscribe communication mode to facilitate real-time data exchange in distributed systems . Data producers ( Publishers ) and consumers ( Subscribers ) exchange information without needing a prior knowledge of each other .
Figure 3-1 : How data subscribers and publishers work in a data-centric DDS architecture .
6 February 2025