a remote message communication interface 504 and an application programming interface 502 the application interface 502 provides methods and data interfaces to a plurality of applications in one embodiment the application interface is an object library that can be linked to an application at design time the bulletin board manager 501 contains an upgrade and configuration manager 507 an event manager 505 a data access manager 508 and a data integrity watchdog 506 the upgrade and configuration manager 507 is necessary to configure the data structure of the bulletin board and to make executable code available to individual processing nodes in the context of the present description the bulletin board may refer to any database that enables users to send and or read electronic messages files and or other data that are of general interest and or addressed to no particular person process the access manager provides access control mechanisms for the code update and configuration mode it also may control access rights for individual applications at execution time in the run mode the event manager 505 captures input output events as variables and generates new events flags or signals based on operations on state variables in the bulletin board such operations may include test of maximum values the occurrence of logically combined events the result of an integrity check or events and signals that are created based on any other logical or arithmetic computation on the state variables that are stored in the bulletin board the actual processing of data and manipulation of data may be done in the application that uses the middleware 402 the data integrity watchdog analyses the stored state variables for its integrity and generates events or flags if any problem.