Cyclone DDS Webinar: History and Future of DDS Technology

Cyclone DDS, led by pioneers, revolutionizes data distribution with its user-friendly, high-performance implementation.

### The Evolution and Future of DDS: Insights from Cyclone DDS Unleashed Webinar
* 👋 Welcome to the first webinar of the Cyclone DDS Unleashed series, hosted by Zeta Scale Technology's marketing team, featuring CEO **Angelo Crossaro** and DDS Head of Technology **Eric Basson**, both pioneers in DDS technology with **over 20 years of experience**.
* 🧠 The webinar will explore the evolution of DDS technology into the OMG standard and discuss why **Cyclone DDS is favored among users**, particularly highlighted during the **ROSCON in Kyoto last year**.
* 📊 A quiz will engage participants on DDS history, including questions about its **invention date**, **location**, and the **individuals behind it**, with correct answers revealed throughout the session.
* 🔍 DDS was invented in 1984 at Signal by Martin Wilson, with its first implementation, **Splice**, serving as a foundational element in the development of **DDS standards**.
* 📜 The standardization process transitioned to the **Object Management Group (OMG)** in the early 2000s, leading to the creation of a family of **around 14 standards**, with the core standards being the **DDS Data Distribution Service** and its **interoperability protocols**.
* 💡 The webinar emphasizes the importance of **maintaining high standards and interoperability** in DDS implementations, with a focus on **avoiding certain standards deemed ineffective**, such as RPC over DDS and web-enabled DDS.
* 🚀 Cyclone DDS aims to provide a **developer-friendly implementation**, facilitating **seamless integration and scalability** across various systems, while also introducing a new protocol called **Zeno for enhanced data management**.
* 🔗 The session will conclude with Eric presenting further insights into Cyclone DDS, highlighting its **growing adoption and success** in diverse applications, particularly in the **automotive sector**.

### Navigating Standards and Open Source in DDS Implementation
* 🔍 It's essential to balance adherence to standards with user experience, sometimes requiring **conscious deviations to improve usability**.
* 💬 The project embraces **transparency** as a true **open-source initiative**, welcoming questions from users regardless of their **language proficiency**.
* 🔧 The Eclipse Foundation provides governance, ensuring that **contributions dictate control** over the Cyclone DDS project, which is the **only truly open-source DDS implementation**.
* 📊 DDS is designed for an **eventually consistent shared data space**, utilizing topics and quality of service settings to optimize **low latency and high throughput** in distributed systems.
* 💡 While the strength of DDS lies in its ability to **support massive data replication and local caching**, it sacrifices some **operational primitives** to achieve these goals.
* A well-thought-out data model is crucial for effective application development using DDS, allowing for **independent component development and integration**.
* 📈 Performance benchmarks highlight the challenges of measuring latency and throughput, emphasizing the **importance of context** in interpreting these figures.
* 🛠 As the project evolves, features like **persistent durability** will be implemented, but careful consideration and thorough documentation are necessary to **maintain quality and functionality**.

Cyclone DDS - Optimizing Data Distribution and Real-Time Data Sharing | DDS Integration Guide

ZettaScale

DDS technology was invented by Martin Wilson at Signal in 1984, with its first implementation being Splice.

The patent for DDS was acknowledged in 1990, also held by Martin.

The standardization of DDS was initially pursued through the Java Community Process, but it didn't work out due to conceptual overlaps with another standard.

The standardization of DDS began in the early 2000s with the Object Management Group, leading to the creation of the DDS Data Distribution Service.

As of 2023, there are around 14 standards, with some being less relevant.

The team has been actively involved in the standardization process, aiming for portability and interoperability, but has faced challenges due to varying vendor compliance.

The Impact of Standardization and Innovation in DDS

The implementation of specifications in big companies can sometimes be harmful, leading to inefficient protocols like DDS XRC.

The new C++ API aimed to provide a user-friendly and ergonomic experience, using advanced C++ features for compile-time checks.

The speaker emphasizes the power of innovation and open source in driving change, sharing lessons learned from their efforts to scale DDS over the internet and improve its implementation.

Cyclone DDS and Zeno: Revolutionizing Data Management

Cyclone DDS aims to provide a seamless and developer-friendly implementation of DDS, addressing the entire data continuum from data centers to microcontrollers.

The new protocol, Zeno, unifies data in motion and at rest through pub-sub and distributed queries, offering location transparency and efficient computation.

The two technologies work together to enable effortless interoperability and scalability, allowing for the integration of various systems and applications.

The Impact of Cyclone DDS on the ROS2 Community

Cyclone DDS has challenged the dominance of a single implementation in the ROS2 ecosystem, leading to improved middleware support for the community.

The implementation's success has been driven by its use of an open-source network stack with a decade of field experience.

Cyclone DDS is now gaining traction in the automotive industry, working towards safety certification and addressing the need for an easy-to-use system in dynamic project environments.

The Approach to Deviating from Standards in Open Source Projects

The project consciously deviates from standards when they hinder user experience, aiming for a compromise.

It emphasizes being open and accessible, providing support to users regardless of their background or language.

The project's governance is through the Eclipse Foundation, ensuring collaborative control and accountability, while offering a unique approach to implementing an eventually consistent shared data space through topics, publishers, and subscribers.

A good data model allows for the independent development and integration of system components.

Splitting processes can save bandwidth and make updates more manageable.

The stability of a data model enables the reuse of components over decades, while the configuration of quality of service settings in DDS offers flexibility in data transfer and monitoring.

Progress and Challenges in DDS Implementation

The speaker's friends are eager to contribute, leading to a longer development timeline for DDS implementation.

The rare use of certain quality of service features has delayed their support, while the safety certification for automotive use has required extensive documentation and has slowed down development.

Benchmarking and performance measurement have shown promising results, but challenges like socket buffer overruns and packet loss have affected the consistency of throughput and latency.

DDS was originally designed for small messages, but the shift to larger data, like images and videos, has led to a dramatic improvement in large messaging performance.

The importance of latency in high-frequency control commands is often overstated, making system-specific measurements more meaningful.

Interoperability between different vendors is challenging due to non-standardized parts and vendor-specific extensions, but successful interoperation in complex systems is possible with careful implementation.

Building a Latency and Throughput Measurement Tool

The speaker attempted to create a simple measurement tool using a single C++ program, but ended up with four versions due to implementation challenges.

The tool aims to provide interoperable code between different DDS implementations.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of feedback for improving the technology and offers both open source and commercial supported versions.