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Understanding Code Mobility (1998)
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| Venue: | IEEE COMPUTER SCIENCE PRESS |
| Citations: | 559 - 34 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Fuggetta98understandingcode,
author = {Alfonso Fuggetta and Gian Pietro Picco and Giovanni Vigna},
title = { Understanding Code Mobility},
journal = {IEEE COMPUTER SCIENCE PRESS},
year = {1998},
pages = {342--361}
}
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Abstract
The technologies, architectures, and methodologies traditionally used to develop distributed applications exhibit a variety of limitations and drawbacks when applied to large scale distributed settings (e.g., the Internet). In particular, they fail in providing the desired degree of configurability, scalability, and customizability. To address these issues, researchers are investigating a variety of innovative approaches. The most promising and intriguing ones are those based on the ability of moving code across the nodes of a network, exploiting the notion of mobile code. As an emerging research field, code mobility is generating a growing body of scientific literature and industrial developments. Nevertheless, the field is still characterized by the lack of a sound and comprehensive body of concepts and terms. As a consequence, it is rather difficult to understand, assess, and compare the existing approaches. In turn, this limits our ability to fully exploit them in practice, and to further promote the research work on mobile code. Indeed, a significant symptom of this situation is the lack of a commonly accepted and sound definition of the term "mobile code" itself. This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding code mobility. The framework is centered around a classification that introduces three dimensions: technologies, design paradigms, and applications. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides a set of terms and concepts to understand and compare the approaches based on the notion of mobile code. Second, it introduces criteria and guidelines that support the developer in the identification of the classes of applications that can leverage off of mobile code, in the design of these applications, and, finally, in the selection of the most appropriate implementation technologies. The presentation of the classification is intertwined with a review of the state of the art in the field. Finally, the use of the classification is exemplified in a case study.
Keyphrases
code mobility mobile code industrial development distributed application design paradigm term mobile code research work research field scientific literature sound definition large scale significant symptom appropriate implementation technology desired degree conceptual framework innovative approach case study comprehensive body intriguing one
