EQUIP has been developed within the Equator IRC as an integration platform and middleware solution for the various activities and projects within Equator. EQUIP is based around the concept of a shared dataspace. Information producers can publish information to a dataspace, and can keep this information up-to-date. Information consumers can use pattern-based techniques to register their information interests with a dataspace, which can then information about any data changes to them.
EQUIP is an item of cross-platform and cross-language software, which provides for easy interoperation between Java and C++ through the use of cross-language and cross-platform type definitions and serialization formats. It also supports easy extensibility through the inclusion of run-time class loading in both Java and C++.
EQUIP4j is a Java-only subset of EQUIP, which uses the same source files, but which uses Apache Ant as a build system, and which is quite a bit more accessible for Java programmers than the full dual-language system.