DOLCLAN - Middleware support for peer-to-peer distributed shared objects

Abstract

Contemporary object-oriented programming seeks to enable distributed computing by accessing remote objects using blocking remote procedure calls. This technique, however, suffers from several drawbacks because it relies on the assumption of stable network connections and synchronous method invocations. In this paper we present an approach to support distributed programming, which rely on local object replicas keeping themselves synchronized using an underlying peer-to-peer infrastructure. We have termed our approach Peer-to-peer Distributed Shared Objects (PDSO). This PDSO approach has been implemented in the DOLCLAN framework. An evaluation demonstrates that DOLCLAN can be utilized to create a real distributed collaborative system for ad-hoc collaboration in hospitals, which demonstrates that the approach can support the creation of non-trivial distributed applications for pervasive computing. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.