Delegating remote operation execution in a mobile computing environment

Abstract

Remote operation execution is nowadays the most popular paradigm used to build distributed systems and applications. This success originates in the simplicity exhibited by programming along the client--server paradigm. Unfortunately, connectivity and bandwidth restrictions defy the unchanged porting of this well known mechanisms to the mobile computing field. In this paper we present an approach that allows to develop applications which are tailored for the specific requirements of mobile computing, while retaining the simple and well understood remote execution paradigm. The approach provides the additional benefit that established services could easily be used from mobile platforms. The cornerstone of our approach is integrated linguistic support for dynamically delegating the execution and control of remote procedure calls (RPC) to a delegate located on the fixed part of the network. Besides presenting the language constructs, we discuss the extensions to the RPC--based development process and the necessary run--time support