IMPLEMENTING REQUEST/REPLY PROGRAMMING SEMANTICS USING PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE MIDDLEWARE

A request/reply middleware wrapper that transposes an application's request/reply communications into publish/subscribe communications implemented by publish/subscribe middleware where every distributed application component of a distributed application is referenced by a component type and name. Each component type has associated with it a request publish/subscribe topic and a reply publish/subscribe topic. Each distributed application component subscribes to its request and reply topics and can publish to request and reply topics of other component types. By utilizing callback objects, the middleware wrapper facilitates the transmission of a request and replies between distributed application components by posting the requests or replies on an appropriate request or reply publish/subscribe topic.