Mobility and Java RMI

Abstract

Recent advances in computing device and wireless communication technologies are enabling the widespread use of mobile computing devices. Mobile computing presents many problems not encountered in a static computing environment. The limited storage and processing power on the mobile device, the limited bandwidth available on wireless networks and the difficulties of locating a mobile device mean that mobile environments are more difficult to design distributed systems for than fixed networks. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard for building distributed object-oriented applications. However the standard was designed primarily for static environments and therefore does not address the problems encountered by objects residing on mobile devices. The Architecture for Location Independent CORBA Environments (ALICE) adds support for such mobile objects to the CORBA standard. This project examines how the mobility support provided by ALICE can be applied to distributed applications constructed using Java RMI. Sections of the ALICE architecture that were independent of CORBA were reused in the design. This dissertation outlines the design of the RMI specific components of the architecture to replace the CORBA specific components, and the completion of a Java implementation of the ALICE component that provides session layer mobility support. The completed set of components provides support for mobile RMI client and server objects that can interact transparently with other RMI objects. All of the implementation was done in Java using Java sockets and RMI to communicate across the network.