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An exclusive interview with Zhou Junyi: how to take root in basic middleware

If we say that the current situation of digital development is a tree, the branches and leaves on the ground cover all kinds of applications in different industries and constantly improve the business efficiency of enterprises; while we cannot see the roots buried deep in the ground, it is the key that affects the overall digitization process.

At present, with the digitization process coming to the deep water area, enterprises need to go deeper from the previous application layer, constantly dive competition, and constantly innovate independently, so as to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies. Root technology is not only the root of technology tree, but also the only way for the further development of software industry. It can continuously provide nourishment for the industry and the overall technology tree of the industry, and help enterprises to lay the foundation of independent innovation in the fierce competition.

On September 21, at the 2023 open source sub-forum of Huawei full connection Conference, Huawei said that the trend of domestic software root technological innovation has begun, and it is now in a period of strategic opportunity and has a large market space. Under this opportunity, Huawei released the first comprehensive self-developed cipher suite openHiTLS and the full scene intelligent front-end framework openInula. These two open source basic middleware help the independent innovation of software root technology and are of great significance to build the core competitiveness of business digitization. To this end, CSDN interviewed Zhou Junyi, general manager of Huawei ICT Open Source Industry and Ecological Development Department, to listen to his thoughts on the development of domestic basic middleware and the interpretation of the value of the two open source software.

Zhou Junyi, General Manager of Open Source Industry and Ecological Development Department of Huawei ICT

Root technology continues to grow, basic middleware blossoms

In the White Paper on the Development of Chinese Software Root Technology (basic Software) released in 2022, it is pointed out that root technology mainly includes operating system, data management, middleware and programming language. Among them, middleware, as one of the core basic software, is also the backbone of building digital transformation infrastructure.

Nowadays, more and more enterprises realize the importance of software infrastructure under the background of digital transformation, and the middleware market is booming in China. According to data from Ai Media Consulting, the size of China's middleware market in 2022 was 10.88 billion yuan, an increase of 19.4 percent over the same period last year, and is expected to reach 16.78 billion yuan in 2025. However, there are some misunderstandings in the development of domestic middleware, the current development is mainly focused on the application of middleware and industry middleware, while there is a huge space for the development of basic middleware. At present, a hundred flowers blossom in the software industry. based on the basic middleware, software applications can run between different systems, let data be stored in different databases, and exchange information between different networks. At the same time, with the continuous evolution of distributed computing architecture, the value of middleware continues to improve, it can combine the server and the server, and decouple the business logic and the underlying software, which is an indispensable part of the future technology development.

Why develop basic middleware? Zhou Junyi said that basic middleware is different from application middleware and industry middleware and plays a role in competitiveness. Basic middleware has typical root technical characteristics, which makes it converge the key competitiveness of the underlying chip, operating system and database, and provide it to the upper application, which can perceive the running state of the upper application business. It is the key to help enterprises to create the best products and solutions in the whole stack. At the same time, due to the high versatility of basic middleware, users can form a strong dependence; for developers, basic middleware can also greatly improve the experience of development, deployment and use.

For enterprises, further embracing basic middleware is of great value to the improvement of their overall R & D efficiency. The standardization of software development is very necessary, it can be said that code development without standard is like a house without foundation, although it can be built, it is difficult to build high, and it may even knock down the reconstruction as a whole when the enterprise develops to a certain extent. Through basic middleware, enterprises can realize application development, business process configuration and integration among application systems in a component-based and standardized way. this enables the traditional data information to interconnect across systems, platforms and applications, which plays an important role in improving the efficiency of application software research and development, and can also reduce costs in the later stage of software maintenance. Therefore, embracing basic middleware is not only to help enterprises reduce the burden of the system, but also to help the digital development of enterprises to lay a deeper foundation and take deeper roots.

Establish the foundation and realize the continuous independent innovation of software

Although Zhou Junyi mentioned above that basic middleware has important value, like other root technologies, it is difficult to research and develop, and the investment is huge, so it can not be achieved overnight through introduction and other ways of striving for quick success and instant benefits. it requires long-term technology and talent investment to build relevant ecology and standards to ensure sustainable development. In addition, from the point of view of the market of middleware, basic middleware supports the operation of a large number of applications, but the demands of different applications are different, and the platform adapts to many versions and changes rapidly, which makes the development of basic middleware more difficult.

How to solve these problems? Open source is an important force that can not be ignored. Basic middleware has obvious ecological properties, and the breakthrough of some key technologies requires industry innovation; open source means more extensive openness, which helps the sustainable development and optimization of massive industry applications; and the way of open source co-construction can also achieve further ecological prosperity and form a good closed loop.

Zhou Junyi said that through open source, we can further develop the root technology, especially the key part of basic middleware. I hope everyone will participate together. It is based on this idea that at this year's full connection conference, Huawei officially opened up openHiTLS, a security suite with all features, extreme performance and high trust, as well as a high-performance, full-scene, intelligent front-end framework openInula. After years of technology incubation within Huawei, these two softwares are fully verified and open source, which will help to build a cutting-edge technology base and jointly build a domestic prosperity ecology.

OpenHiTLS has a more flexible architecture to support tailoring capabilities; has a better performance in the state secret algorithm, which can help enterprises improve efficiency; and through advanced and comprehensive testing, reduce the risk of vulnerabilities and greatly improve security. OpenInula is fully compatible with React ecology while providing innovative responsive API that allows the application of fine-grained updates to greatly improve web performance by minimizing the range of re-rendering. At the same time, openInula provides a series of core components and development tools that cover common functions, providing developers with an one-stop development experience and integrating a unified portal covering the whole scene.

The open source of these two kinds of software plays an important role in promoting the development of the industry. First of all, the open source-based approach can help reduce enterprise application costs and improve development efficiency; secondly, it can further promote the improvement of domestic basic software ecology and promote the continuous upgrading of software ecological independent innovation. to provide underlying technical support for the further development of root technology.

Zhou Junyi believes that the open source of these two types of software can also have the following positive effects:

The first is the application demonstration, with the help of the openness of the open source ecology, responding to the needs of the industry, and cooperating with enterprises to carry out pilot applications to create a model case of software independent innovation.

The second is joint innovation, cooperate with universities and scientific research institutions, continuously explore cutting-edge technologies, realize the integration of industry and education, and constantly gather talents.

The third is to prosper the community, to provide incentives for contributors, through the open source community to continuously empower developers and enterprises, so that more people can participate in community construction and participate in the construction of software independent innovation.

Help in many ways to build a prosperous ecology of basic middleware

In the past, middleware is the hub, and its key role is cohesion. According to CSDN, basic middleware is the backbone. The value of the spine is not only to connect the brain and various organs, its key value also lies in hematopoiesis. Through the basic middleware, we can not only achieve the continuous interconnection between previous applications and basic resources, but also achieve continuous growth, continuous innovation and create more vitality technology through the basic middleware.

Although the development prospect of basic middleware is good, it is difficult to achieve overall ecological prosperity only by relying on individual enterprises. Therefore, people from different industries and roles need to make joint efforts to stimulate technological innovation and form a joint force in order to achieve the real prosperity of ecology. Zhou Junyi said: "only by doing the industrial ecology, there are sufficient technological input and effective output to provide corresponding returns for technical personnel, which is expected to allow more people to invest in the basic middleware industry and create greater value."

At present, openHiTLS has cooperated with community partners to jointly research and implement the application of Merchant Secret in SSL VPN scenarios. As a basic technical module of commercial secret transformation, it can be widely used in banking system, mobile, integrated websites and other business scenarios. The openHiTLS community will continue to work with industry partners to expand commercial secret application scenarios, plan to carry out the verification and open source construction of quantum and other advanced cryptographic algorithms, and create more demonstration projects.

As a JavaScript front-end framework for building a user interface, openInula not only integrates the React ecology, but also provides an innovative responsive API, which greatly improves the performance of web pages by minimizing the range of re-rendering. In addition, openInula also covers a series of common functional components to provide developers with an one-stop development experience. At the same time, openInula is conducting collaborative research on AI, which aims to further optimize the front-end development process through the empowerment of large language models.

The open source release of openHiTLS and openInula basic middleware will help more enterprises and industry partners to promote the continuous upgrading of technological independent innovation and help the breakthrough of key technologies. Finally, Zhou Junyi looked forward to the future: "facing the future, we hope to focus on software root technology and open source to build the software ecology of basic middleware." hope to work with partners to build the basic middleware of independent innovation, create the best products and solutions in the stack, and actively contribute to the construction of social digital capabilities. "

Everyone gathers firewood and the fire is high, and we look forward to more people participating in it to create an open source prosperity ecology.

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