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Designing Fault-Tolerant Mobile Systems

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Scientific Engineering for Distributed Java Applications (FIDJI 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2604))

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how several innovative techniques, not all initially intended for fault-tolerance, can be applied in providing fault tolerance of complex mobile agent systems. Due to their roaming nature, mobile agents usually run on Java-based platforms, which ensures full portability of mobile code. The first part of the paper discusses specific characteristics of mobile systems, outlines the application areas benefiting from code mobility, and shows why the existing error recovery techniques are not suitable for mobile systems. In the next part of the paper we present evaluation criteria for fault tolerance techniques, and propose several possible solutions for error recovery at the application level: meta-agent, Coordinated Atomic actions, asynchronous resolution, self-repair, and proof carrying code. The intention is to allow system developers to choose the approach which is suited best to the characteristics of the mobile agent application to be designed. To this end we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each technique, as well as situations in which it provides the most benefit. A simple example, based on Internet shopping, is used throughout the paper to demonstrate the techniques.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre Universitatire d’Informatique, University of Geneva, Geneva 4, CH-1211, Switzerland

    Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo

  2. School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, NE1 7RU, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Alexander Romanovsky

Authors
  1. Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo
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  2. Alexander Romanovsky
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Départment d’Informatique Appliquée, Institut Supérieur de Technologie, 6, rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1359, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Nicolas Guelfi

  2. Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell’Informazione (DISI), Universitá di Genova-Italy, Via Dodecaneso 35, 16146, Genova, Italy

    Egidio Astesiano  & Gianna Reggio  & 

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Di Marzo Serugendo, G., Romanovsky, A. (2003). Designing Fault-Tolerant Mobile Systems. In: Guelfi, N., Astesiano, E., Reggio, G. (eds) Scientific Engineering for Distributed Java Applications. FIDJI 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2604. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36520-6_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36520-6_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00679-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36520-4

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