Mobile Java objects

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the design of a mobile Java object infrastructure. It describes why it is helpful to group objects for mobility and how, when clusters represent untrusted pieces of code (for example mobile agents), they must be encapsulated both to control their access to other objects and to control access to them. The difficulties of managing large numbers of mobile objects in an open environment are discussed, together with a solution based on the management of large distributed name spaces. The mobile object system described has been implemented, and is currently being used to support development of mobile agent-based applications within another project. The paper also explains how the infrastracture described meets the requirements of mobile agents better than other approaches.