Skip to main content
Log in

Mobility and Extensibility in the StratOSphere Framework

  • Published:
Distributed and Parallel Databases Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We describe the design and implementation of our StratOSphere project, a framework which unifies distributed objects and mobile code applications. We begin by first examining different mobile code paradigms that distribute processing of code and data resource components across a network. After analyzing these paradigms, and presenting a lattice of functionality, we then develop a layered architecture for StratOSphere, incorporating higher levels of mobility and interoperability at each successive layer. In our design, we provide an object model that permits objects to migrate to different sites, select among different method implementations, and provide new methods and behavior. We describe how we build new semantics in each software layer, and present sample objects developed for the Alexandria Digital Library Project at UC Santa Barbara, which as been building an information retrieval system for geographically-referenced information and datasets. We have designed using StratOSphere a repository that stores its holdings. The library's map, image and geographical data are viewed as a collection of objects with extensible operations. StratOSphere.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. A. Acharya, M. Ranganathan, and J. Saltz, Sumatra: A Language for Resource-aware Mobile Programs, Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1997, pp. 111-130.

  2. K. Arnold and J. Gosling, The Java Programming Language, Prentice-Hall: Reading, MA, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  3. B. Awerbuch and D. Peleg, “Online tracking of mobile users,” Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, vol. 42, pp. 1021-1058, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  4. A.D. Birrell and B.J. Nelson, “Implementing remote procedure calls,” in Proc. ACM Symp. on Transactions on Computer Systems, February 1984, pp. 19-59.

  5. D. Box, Creating Components with DCOM and C++, Addison Wesley, Longman, 1997.

  6. L. Cardelli, “A language with distributed scope,” in Proc. of the 22nd ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, 1995.

  7. A. Carzaniga, G.P. Picco, and G. Vigna, “Designing distributed applications with mobile code paradigms,” in Proc. of the 19th Intl. Conf. on Software Engineering, 1997.

  8. P.I. Chang, Inside the Java Web Server, Javasoft, Inc., http://java.sun.com/-features/1997/aug/jwsl.html, 1997.

  9. D.R. Cheriton, “The v distributed system,” Communications of the ACM, pp. 314-333, March 1988.

  10. G. Cugola, C. Ghezzi, G.P. Picco, and G. Vigna, “A characterization of mobility and state distribution in mobile code languages,” in Proc. of the 2nd Workshop on Mobile Object Systems, July 1997.

  11. F. Douglis and J. Ousterhout, “Process migration in the sprite operating system,” in Proc. of the 7th Intl. Conf. Distributed Computer Systems, 1987, pp. 18-25.

  12. E. Gamma, R. Johnson, R. Helm, and J. Vlissides, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Addison-Wesley, 1995.

  13. A. Goscinski, Distributed Operating Systems: The Logical Design, Addison-Wesley, 1991.

  14. J. Gosling, B. Joy, and G. Steele, The Java Language Specification, Sunsoft Java Series, Addison Wesley, 1996.

  15. R.S. Gray, “Agent tcl: A flexible and secure mobile-agent system,” in Proc. of the 4th Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop, 1996, pp. 9-23.

  16. S. Gundavaram, CGI programming on the World Wide Web, O'Reilly & Associates: Cambridge, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  17. J.D. Guttman, W.M. Farmer, and V. Swarup, “Security for mobile agents: Authentication and state appraisal,” in Fourth European Symposium on Research in Computer Security Proceedings, September 1996, pp. 118-130.

  18. J. Hartman, U. Manber, L. Peterson, and T. Proebsting, “Liquid software: A new paradigm for networked systems,” Technical Report Technical Report 96-11, University of Arizona, June 1996.

  19. D.J. Hughes, “Mini sql: A lightweight database server,” http://Hughes.com.au/-product/msql, 1995.

  20. B. Janssen and M. Spreitzer, ILU 2.0 Reference Manual, Xerox PARC, http://-ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html, 1996.

  21. D. Johansen, R. van Reneese, and F. Schneider, “An introduction to the tacoma distributed system,” Technical Report Technical Report 95-23, University of Tromso, 1995.

  22. E. Jul, H. Levy, N. Hutchinson, and A. Black, “Fine-grained mobility in the emerald system,” in Proc. ACM Symp. on Transactions on Computer Systems, 1988, pp. 109-133.

  23. D.B. Lange and D.T. Chang, “Ibm aglets workbench: Programming mobile agents in java,” http://www.trl.ibm.co.jp/aglets/whitepaper.htm, 1996.

  24. B. Meyer, Object-Oriented Software Construction, Prentice-Hall, 1988.

  25. G.C. Necula and P. Lee, “Safe kernel extensions without run-time checking,” in Proc. of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Operating System and Design and Implementation, October 1996.

  26. ObjectSpace, “Voyager technical overview,” http://www.objectspace.com/voyager/-technical white papers.html, 1996.

  27. Open Software Foundation, Introduction to OSF DCE: Rev 1.0, Prentice Hall: Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  28. G. Popek and B.J. Walker (Eds.), The Locus Distributed System Architecture, MIT Press, February 1986.

  29. J. Richardson and P. Schwarz, “Aspects: Extending object to support multiple independent roles,” in Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. on Management of Data, May 1991, pp. 298-307.

  30. R. Riggs, J. Waldo, and A. Wollrath, “Pickling state in java,” in Second Conf. on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS), Toronto, Ontario, June 1996, pp. 241-250.

  31. A.H. Robinson, Elements of Cartography, Wiley: New York, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  32. W. Rosenberry, D. Kenney, and G. Fisher, Understanding DCE, O'Reilly & Associates: Sebastopol, CA, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  33. H. Satoshi, The Magic Carpet for Network Computing: HORB Flyer's Guide, Electrotechnical Laboratory, http://ring.etl.go.jp/openlab/horb, 1996.

  34. G. Semeczko and S.Y.W. Su, “Supporting object migration in distributed systems,” in Proc. of the Fifth Intl. Conf. on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, Melbourne, Australia, April 1997, pp. 59-66.

  35. J. Siegal, CORBA: Fundamentals and Programming, Wiley, 1996.

  36. T.R. Smith and J. Frew, “Alexandria digital library,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 38,no. 4, pp. 61-62, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  37. M. Stonebraker, “Object management in postgres using procedures,” in 1986 International Workshop on Object-Oriented Database Systems, Pacific Grove, Calif., September 1986, pp. 66-72.

  38. Sun Microsystems, Inc., Java Core Reflection API and Specification, http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/reflection/-index.html, 1997.

  39. J. Tardo and L. Valente, “Mobile agent security and telescript,” in 41st TEEE Computer Society Intl. Conf., February 1996, pp. 58-63.

  40. C. Tschudin, The Messenger Environment MØ—A Condensed Description, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, 1997, pp. 149-156.

  41. P. van Roy, S. Haridi, P. Brand, et al., “Mobile objects in distributed oz,” in Proc. ACM Symp. on Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, September 1997, pp. 804-851.

  42. J. White, “Mobile agents white paper,” http://genmagic.com/agents/Whitepaper/-whitepaper.html, 1996.

  43. J. White, “Telescript technology: Mobile agents,” http://genmagic.com/TeleScript/-WhitePapers, 1996.

  44. A. Wollrath, R. Riggs, and J. Waldo, “A distributed object model for java,” in Second Conf. on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS), Toronto, Ontario, June 1996, pp. 219-231.

  45. D. Wu, D. Agrawal, A. El Abbadi, and A. Singh, “A java-based framework for processing distributed objects,” in Proc. Intl. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling, Los Angeles, CA, 1997, pp. 333-346.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Wu, D., Agrawal, D. & El Abbadi, A. Mobility and Extensibility in the StratOSphere Framework. Distributed and Parallel Databases 7, 289–317 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008734827590

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008734827590

Keywords

Navigation