In this paper, we argue that middleware for wired distributed systems cannot be used in a mobile setting, as the principle of transparency that has driven their design runs counter to the new degrees of awareness imposed by mobility. We propose the marriage of reflection and metadata as a means for middleware to give applications dynamic access to information about their execution context. Finally, we describe a conceptual model that provides the basis of our reflective middleware.

Recent advances in wireless networking technologies and the growing success of mobile computing devices, such as laptop computers...

In this paper we argue that middleware solutions for wired distributed systems cannot be used in a mobile setting. We show that mobile applications impose new requirements that run counter to the principles on which current middleware systems have been built. We propose the use of reflection capabilities and meta-data to pave the way for a new generation of middleware platforms designed to support mobility. 1

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This paper describes why Object-Serialization is not appropriate for providing persistence in Java. With numerous code examples, Object-Serialization is shown to be easy to work with initially which seduces the developer into relying on it for persistence within more complex applications. The advanced use of object-serialization requires significant work from the programmer, something that is not apparent at first. The use of object-serialization together with static and transient fields and within multi-threaded programs is discussed together with the “big inhale problem”: the need to read in the entire object graph before processing over it can commence. The complexity of using object-serialization within a distributed environment, when evolving classes and when using specialised classloaders is also discussed. The paper compares the performance of serializing and deserializing a byte array and binary tree of the same data size to and from an NFS mounted disk and two kinds of local disk. Alternative solutions to object-persistence in Java are presented at the end of the paper. 1