Introduction to EQUIP

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.