| dc.description.abstract | Ericsson NorARC (Norwegian Applied Research Center) is developing architectures and
frameworks for advanced telecom and Internet systems and services. The current
technologies are JavaFrame, ActorFrame and ServiceFrame, which enable rapid
development and system dependability.
Jini is a technology for making dynamic, robust and self-healing distributed systems. It
can be used with JavaSpaces technology, which is a distributed shared memory
technology that provides loosely coupled communication in time, space and destination.
In this thesis, we evaluate if Jini, JavaSpaces and frameworks building on these
technologies can be used to distribute Ericsson NorARC’s technologies in dynamic
network-centric environments.
We have evaluated the relatively immature frameworks Rio, SI and Openwings. All the
frameworks have interesting features that could prove to be valuable, but as it is today,
Openwings stands out as the most complete and useful framework. It also has
properties that match well with JavaFrame concepts.
Based on Jini and JavaSpaces, we have developed several conceptual ideas. This has
been done to show how these technologies could be used together with the JavaFrame,
ActorFrame and ServiceFrame concepts of asynchronously communicating state
machines. Several interesting ideas have evolved when having taken an in-depth look at
Jini and JavaSpaces, for instance a conceptual space-based architecture has been
developed. In this architecture, we introduce new concepts like dynamic role
downloading, a Role repository and role trading.
A prototype framework called SpaceFrame has been developed to simplify distribution
of system components. Using SpaceFrame will also help systems adapt to change, in
both system demands and network topology. An example application has been
developed by using SpaceFrame, demonstrating loosely coupled communication and
downloading of roles on the fly. SpaceFrame shows that integration of Jini, JavaSpaces
and JavaFrame-based technologies is possible, much due to the fact that Jini’s
distributed event model can be used for asynchronous communication through a
JavaSpace.
We have found that Both Jini and JavaSpaces are technologies that have something to
offer when distributing Ericsson NorARC’s service creation technologies in dynamic
context-sensitive environments. The most elegant model is probably obtained by
combining Jini and JavaSpaces together as we have done with the SpaceFrame
prototype. By using this approach, total asynchronous and uncoupled communication
can be achieved between different JVMs. | en |
