Glossary · Industrial communication
Data Distribution Service (DDS)
Also known as: DDS
German: Data Distribution Service (DDS)
In software and industrial communication, the Data Distribution Service (DDS) is a middleware standard of the Object Management Group (OMG) for data-centric publish-subscribe communication without a central broker. Participants discover each other and exchange typed data on topics, with configurable quality-of-service policies.
- Industrial communication
- Standards
In one sentence
DDS is an OMG publish-subscribe middleware standard for brokerless, data-centric exchange of typed topics with QoS policies.
Example
In a robot cell, the perception software publishes detected objects on a DDS topic, and the motion planner subscribes to it with a reliability policy.
How it applies
- Engineering: DDS is used in robotics (ROS 2 builds on it), vehicles, defense and some industrial control systems. Data types are defined in advance (for example in IDL), and quality-of-service settings such as reliability, durability and deadline govern delivery.
- Integration: Publishers and subscribers only communicate when their QoS settings are compatible. Mismatches are a common cause of "nothing arrives" errors.
- Security: DDS Security is a separate OMG specification that adds authentication, access control and encryption. It must be configured; it isn't active by default in every implementation.
- Documentation: The documentation team documents topics, data types and QoS profiles as part of the interface description, similar to a Data model.
DDS vs. MQTT
MQTT routes all messages through a broker and treats payloads as opaque bytes. DDS works without a broker, discovers participants on the network and knows the data types of its topics. MQTT is simpler to run across sites; DDS offers finer control of real-time delivery in local networks.