Skip to main content
Log in

Experiences of Using Generative Communications to Support Adaptive Mobile Applications

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

Abstract

Attention has recently begun to focus on the use of asynchronous paradigms to support adaptive mobile applications. To investigate this issue the authors have developed an asynchronous distributed systems platform based on the tuple space paradigm [19] coupled with extensions to support operation in mobile environments. This paper presents our experiences of developing and using this platform. The benefits of the tuple space approach are highlighted and we discuss in some detail the design, implementation and performance of our platform. We subsequently focus on the critical issues of the tuple space API and the level of support for adaptation which can be provided without compromising the elegance and simplicity of the paradigm. The paper concludes with an analysis of the suitability of platforms based on the tuple space paradigm for use in mobile environments.

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.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. E. Amir, H. Balakrishnan, S. Seshan, and R. Katz, “Efficient TCP over networks with wireless links,” in Proc. 5th IEEE Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-V), Rosario Resort, Orcas Island, Washington, US, IEEE Computer Society Press, May 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  2. A.P.M. Ltd., “ANSA: An engineer's introduction to the architecture,” Architecture Projects Management Ltd., Cambridge, UK, November 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  3. A. Bakre and B.R. Badrinath, “M-RPC: A remote procedure call service for mobile clients,” Technical Report WINLAB TR-98, Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, US, June 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  4. G.S. Blair, N. Davies, A. Friday, and S.P. Wade, “Quality of service support in a mobile environment: An approach based on tuple spaces,” in Proceedings of the 5th IFIP International Workshop on Quality of Service (IWQoS '97)—Building QoS into Distributed Systems, Columbia University, New York, US, May 1997, pp. 37-48.

  5. N. Carriero, D. Gelernter, and L. Zuck, Bauhaus Linda, Selected Papers from ECOOP '94, Bologna, Italy, July 1994, pp. 66-76.

  6. K. Cheverst, N. Davies, A. Friday, and G.S. Blair, “Services to support consistency in mobile collaborative applications,” in Proc. 3rd International Workshop on Services in Distributed Networked Environments (SDNE), Macau, China, IEEE Computer Society Press, June 1996, pp. 27-34.

  7. Chorus Systèmes, “CHORUS/COOL-ORB programmer's guide,” Technical Report CS/TR-96-2.1, Chorus Systèmes, 1996.

  8. G. Coulson, G.S. Blair, F. Horn, L. Hazard, and J.B. Stefani, “Supporting the real-time requirements of continuous media in open distributed processing,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 1994, to appear.

  9. N. Davies, G. Blair, K. Cheverst, and A. Friday, “Supporting adaptive services in a heterogeneous mobile environment,” In Proc. Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (MCSA), Santa Cruz, CA, US, Luis-Felipe Cabrera and Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Eds.), IEEE Computer Society Press, December 1994, pp. 153-157.

  10. N. Davies, G.S. Blair, K. Cheverst, and A. Friday, “Supporting collaborative applications in a heterogeneous mobile environment,” Special Issue of Computer Communications on Mobile Computing, vol. 19, pp. 346-358, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  11. N. Davies, A. Friday, S. Wade, and G. Blair, “L2imbo: A distributed systems platform for mobile computing,” ACM Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), Special Issue on Protocols and Software Paradigms of Mobile Networks, vol. 3,no. 2, pp. 143-156, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  12. N. Davies, A. Friday, S. Wade, and G. Blair, “An asynchronous distributed systems platform for heterogeneous environments,” in Proc. 8th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop: Support for Composing Distributed Applications, Sintra, Portugal, ACM Press, 1998.

  13. N. Davies, S.P. Wade, A. Friday, and G.S. Blair, “Limbo: A tuple space based platform for adaptive mobile applications,” In Proceedings of the International Conference on Open Distributed Processing/Distributed Platforms (ICODP/ICDP '97), Toronto, Canada, May 1997, pp. 291-302.

  14. A. Douglas, A. Wood, and A. Rowstron, “Linda implementation revisited,” Transputer and Occam Developments, IOS Press, 1995, pp. 125-138.

  15. S. Floyd, V. Jacobson, S. McCanne, C. Liu, and L. Zhang, “A reliable multicast framework for light-weight sessions and application level framing,” in Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM '95, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, ACM Press, August 1995, pp. 342-356.

  16. A. Fox, S.D. Gribble, E.A. Brewer, and E. Amir, “Adapting to network and client variation via on-demand, dynamic distillation,” in Proc. ASPLOS-VII, Boston, MA, US.

  17. A. Friday, G.S. Blair, K.W.J. Cheverst, and N. Davies, “Extensions to ANSAware for advanced mobile applications,” in Proc. International Conference on Distributed Platforms, Dresden, A. Schill, C. Mittasch, and O. Spaniol (Eds.), Chapman and Hall, pp. 29-43.

  18. D. Gelernter, “Generative communication in Linda,” ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, vol. 7,no. 1, pp. 80-112, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  19. D. Gelernter, N. Carriero, S. Chandran, and S. Chang, “Parallel programming in Linda,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing, August 1985, pp. 255-263.

  20. B. Grönvall, I. Marsh, and S. Pink, “A multicast-based distributed file system for the internet,” in Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop, Connemara, Ireland, ACM Press, September 1996.

  21. “Sun's JavaSpaces is foundation for future distributed systems,” SunWorld, August 1997.

  22. S. Hupfer, “Melinda: Linda with multiple tuple spaces,” Technical Report YALEU/DCS/RR-766, Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, February 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  23. A. Joseph, A. deLespinasse, J. Tauber, D. Gifford, and M.F. Kaashoek, “Rover: A toolkit for mobile information access,” in Proc. 15th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP), Copper Mountain Resort, Colorado, US, ACM Press, vol. 29, December 1995, pp. 156-171.

  24. A.D. Joseph and M.F. Kaashoek, “Building reliable mobile-aware applications using the rover toolkit,” Technical Report, M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science, 1996.

  25. R.H. Katz, “Adaptation and mobility in wireless information systems,” IEEE Personal Communications, vol. 1,no. 1, pp. 6-17, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  26. R. Katz and E. Brewer, “The case for wireless overlay networks,” in Proc. SPIE Multimedia and Networking Conference (MMNC), San Jose, CA, US, January 1996.

  27. J.S. Leichter, “Shared tuple memories, shared memories, buses and LAN's—Linda Implementations across the Spectrum of Connectivity,” Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US July 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  28. J. Nieh and M. Lam, “Integrated processor scheduling for multimedia,” in Proc. 5th International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Durham, New Hampshire, US, April 1995.

  29. J. Pinakis, “The design and implementation of a distributed Linda tuple space,” in Proceedings of the 2nd Department of Computer Science Research Conference, Department of Computer Science, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  30. A. Rowstron and A. Wood, “Solving the Linda multiple rd problem,” in Proc. Coordination Languages and Models (Coordination '96).

  31. A.I.T. Rowstron and A.M. Wood, “Bonita: A set of tuple space primitives for distributed coordinartion,” in Proceedings of the 30th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE CS Press, vol. 1, 1997, pp. 379-388.

  32. J. Seitz, N. Davies, M. Ebner, and A. Friday, “A CORBA-based proxy architecture for mobile multimedia applications,” in Proc. 2nd IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS '98), Versailles, France.

  33. A. Xu and B. Liskov, “A design for a fault-tolerant, distributed implementation of Linda,” in Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, June 1989, pp. 199-206.

  34. N. Yeadon, N. Davies, A. Friday, and G.S. Blair, “Supporting video in heterogeneous environments,” In Proc. Symposium on Applied Computing, Atlanta, US.

  35. N. Yeadon, F. Garcia, D. Hutchison, and D. Shepherd, “Filters: QoS support mechanisms for multipeer communications,” Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, JSAC, vol. 14,no. 7, pp. 1245-1262, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  36. B. Zenel and D. Duchamp, “Intelligent communication filtering for limited bandwidth environments,” in Proc. 5th IEEE Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-V), Rosario Resort, Orcas Island, Washington, US, IEEE Computer Society Press, May 1995.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Friday, A., Davies, N., Seitz, J. et al. Experiences of Using Generative Communications to Support Adaptive Mobile Applications. Distributed and Parallel Databases 7, 319–342 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008786811660

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008786811660

Navigation