Carp@ - A reflection based tool for observing Jini services

Abstract

Jini™ offers the basic technology to develop distributed systems where the participating clients, services and their interactions can adapt dynamically to a changing environment.1 To monitor the internal processes in such a system a reflection mechanism is necessary. However, the existing reflection mechanisms in Java emerged to be too weak to supply enough information for a suitable management of such a system. Therefore these mechanisms had to be extended by a reflective meta level upon Jini. The tool Carp@ (implemented itself as Jini system) is designed to visualize, analyze and control dynamic and distributed Jini systems. This is done by developing a meta architecture upon a Jini system that reflects the running Jini system. This paper describes the meta architecture, the tool to monitor it and reports the gained experiences together with their implied consequences. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000.