Ztreamy: A Middleware for Publishing Semantic Streams on the Web

Abstract

In order to make the semantic sensor Web a reality, middleware for efficiently publishing semantically-annotated data streams on the Web is needed. Such middleware should be designed to allow third parties to reuse and mash-up data coming from streams. These third parties should even be able to publish their own value-added streams derived from other streams and static data. In this work we present Ztreamy, a scalable middleware platform for the distribution of semantic data streams through HTTP. The platform provides an API for both publishing and consuming streams, as well as built-in filtering services based on data semantics. A key contribution of our proposal with respect to other related systems in the state of the art is its scalability. Our experiments with Ztreamy show that a single server is able, in some configurations, to publish a real-time stream to up to 40000 simultaneous clients with delivery delays of just a few seconds, largely outperforming other systems in the state of the art.

Keywords: Semantic Sensor Web, Stream Distribution Middleware, Semantic Stream