Major service discovery technology : a hands-on analysis

In this thesis we look at the issue of properly comparing the major service discovery technologies. Relying on a theoretical comparison to make a decision on which service discovery technology to integrate with for service vendors or clients is not sufficient enough. There is quite a bit of research involved in order to read all the documentation on a technology and it's rare that you can find constructive criticism or issues mentioned by the technology manufacturer. Another issue is to know how much of a coding effort is involved in integrating a client and/or service application with a service discovery technology. Finally, we examine what to do when none of the major service discovery technologies offer all the capabilities that a service vendor or client is looking for. We break down the service discovery into its major components and then give an in-depth analysis of three major service discovery technologies, i.e., Bonjour, Jini, and UPnP, by comparing how they perform for each component. Next, we provide a practical hands-on analysis to demonstrate the coding effort involved to integrate clients/services with each of the service discovery technologies. Finally, we present an alternative service discovery design which merges the robust capabilities of all three technologies along with adding a filtering capability. This thesis allows service vendors and clients to make a practical hands-on comparison of the three major service discovery technologies, so that they make a well informed decision on which of the technologies to integrate with. If each of these technologies fail to meet all the requirements for a service or client, we presents a design for a new service discovery technology which contains all the robust capabilities of the three technologies merged into one while adding an extra event filtering capability.