A Collaborative Visualization Framework Using JINI™ Technology

It is difficult to achieve mutual understanding of complex information between individuals that are separated geographically. Two well-known techniques commonly used to deal with this difficultly are collaboration and information visualization. This thesis develops a generic flexible framework that supports both collaboration and information visualization. It introduces the Collaborative Visualization Environment (COVE) framework, which simplifies the development of real-time synchronous multi-user applications by decoupling the elements of collaboration from the application. This allows developers to focus on building applications and leave the difficulties of collaboration (i.e., concurrency controls, user awareness, session management, etc.) to the framework. The framework uses an object sharing approach to share information and views between participants in a collaborative session. This approach takes advantage of several Java technologies (i.e., JavaBeans™, Jini™, and JavaSpaces™). JavaBeans™ establish a well-known standard for applications to operate within the framework. Jini™ services provide framework stability and enable code sharing across the network. Objects are shared between remote clients through the JavaSpaces™ service

Infrastructure for Distributed Applications in Ad Hoc Networks of Small Mobile Wireless Devices

Mobile wireless computing devices such as cellphones, pagers, personal digital assistants, pocket PCs, and tablet computers are all potential platforms for participating in small group, wireless, many-to-many distributed applications. The networking technology needed to support such applications is readily available. However, almost all existing middleware infrastructure for distributed applications was designed for central servers and wired connections. The Anhinga Infrastructure described here runs entirely on the wireless mobile devices and so does not require any central server support. The Anhinga Infrastructure provides a message broadcast ad hoc networking protocol and a distributed computing platform based on lightweight versions of Java, Jini Network Technology, and tuple spaces

JION: A JavaSpaces Implementation for Opportunistic Networks

International audienceDisconnected mobile ad hoc networks (or D-MANETs) are partially or intermittently connected wireless networks, in which continuous end-to-end connectivity between mobile nodes is not guaranteed. The ability to self-form and self-manage brings great opportunities for D-MANETs, but developing distributed applications capable of running in such networks remains a major challenge. A middleware system is thus needed between network level and application level in order to ease application development, and help developers take advantage of D-MANETs' unique features. In this paper, we introduce JION (JavaSpaces Implementation for Opportunistic Networks), a coordination middleware specifically designed for D-MANETs, and with which pre-existing or new JavaSpaces-based applications can be easily deployed in such networks

Engineering Automation for Reliable Software Interim Progress Report (10/01/2000 - 09/30/2001)

Prepared for: U.S. Army Research Office P.O. Box 12211 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2211The objective of our effort is to develop a scientific basis for producing reliable software that is also flexible and cost effective for the DoD distributed software domain. This objective addresses the long term goals of increasing the quality of service provided by complex systems while reducing development risks, costs, and time. Our work focuses on "wrap and glue" technology based on a domain specific distributed prototype model. The key to making the proposed approach reliable, flexible, and cost-effective is the automatic generation of glue and wrappers based on a designer's specification. The "wrap and glue" approach allows system designers to concentrate on the difficult interoperability problems and defines solutions in terms of deeper and more difficult interoperability issues, while freeing designers from implementation details. Specific research areas for the proposed effort include technology enabling rapid prototyping, inference for design checking, automatic program generation, distributed real-time scheduling, wrapper and glue technology, and reliability assessment and improvement. The proposed technology will be integrated with past research results to enable a quantum leap forward in the state of the art for rapid prototyping.U. S. Army Research Office P.O. Box 12211 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-22110473-MA-SPApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Coordinated collaboration for e-commerce based on the multiagent paradigm.

Lee Ting-on.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-121).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Acknowledgments --- p.iAbstract --- p.iiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Roadmap to the Thesis --- p.5Chapter 2 --- Software Agents and Agent Frameworks --- p.7Chapter 2.1 --- Software Agent --- p.7Chapter 2.1.1 --- Advantages of Agent --- p.10Chapter 2.1.2 --- Roles of Agent --- p.11Chapter 2.2 --- Agent Frameworks --- p.13Chapter 2.3 --- Communication Services and Concepts --- p.15Chapter 2.3.1 --- Message Channel --- p.15Chapter 2.3.2 --- Remote Procedure Call --- p.16Chapter 2.3.3 --- Event Channel --- p.17Chapter 2.4 --- Component --- p.18Chapter 3 --- Related Work --- p.20Chapter 3.1 --- Collaboration Behaviors --- p.20Chapter 3.2 --- Direct Coordination --- p.22Chapter 3.3 --- Meeting-oriented Coordination --- p.23Chapter 3.4 --- Blackboard-based Coordination --- p.24Chapter 3.5 --- Linda-like Coordination --- p.25Chapter 3.6 --- Reactive Tuple Spaces --- p.26Chapter 4 --- Background and Foundations --- p.27Chapter 4.1 --- Choice of Technologies --- p.27Chapter 4.2 --- Jini Technology --- p.28Chapter 4.2.1 --- The Lookup Service --- p.29Chapter 4.2.2 --- Proxy --- p.31Chapter 4.3 --- JavaSpaces --- p.32Chapter 4.4 --- Grasshopper Architecture --- p.33Chapter 5 --- The CoDAC Framework --- p.36Chapter 5.1 --- Requirements for Enabling Collaboration --- p.37Chapter 5.1.1 --- Consistent Group Membership --- p.37Chapter 5.1.2 --- Atomic Commitment --- p.39Chapter 5.1.3 --- Uniform Reliable Multicast --- p.40Chapter 5.1.4 --- Fault Tolerance --- p.40Chapter 5.2 --- System Components --- p.41Chapter 5.2.1 --- Distributed Agent Adapter --- p.42Chapter 5.2.2 --- CollaborationCore --- p.44Chapter 5.3 --- System Infrastructure --- p.45Chapter 5.3.1 --- Agent --- p.45Chapter 5.3.2 --- Distributed Agent Manager --- p.46Chapter 5.3.3 --- Collaboration Manager --- p.46Chapter 5.3.4 --- Kernel --- p.46Chapter 5.4 --- Collaboration --- p.47Chapter 5.5.1 --- Global Collaboration --- p.48Chapter 5.5.2 --- Local Collaboration --- p.48Chapter 6 --- Collaboration Life Cycle --- p.50Chapter 6.1 --- Initialization --- p.50Chapter 6.2 --- Resouces Gathering --- p.53Chapter 6.3 --- Results Delivery --- p.54Chapter 7 --- Protocol Suite --- p.55Chapter 7.1 --- The Group Membership Protocol --- p.56Chapter 7.1.1 --- Join Protocol --- p.56Chapter 7.1.2 --- Leave Protocol --- p.57Chapter 7.1.3 --- Recovery Protocol --- p.59Chapter 7.1.4 --- Proof --- p.61Chapter 7.2 --- Atomic Commitment Protocol --- p.62Chapter 7.3 --- Uniform Reliable Multicast --- p.63Chapter Chapter 8 --- Implementation --- p.66Chapter 8.1 --- Interfaces and Classes --- p.66Chapter 8.1.1 --- The CoDACAdapterInterface --- p.66Chapter 8.1.2 --- The CoDACEventListener --- p.69Chapter 8.1.3 --- The DAAdapter --- p.71Chapter 8.1.4 --- The DAManager --- p.75Chapter 8.1.5 --- The CoDACInternalEventListener --- p.77Chapter 8.1.6 --- The CollaborationManager --- p.77Chapter 8.1.7 --- The CollaborationCore --- p.78Chapter 8.2 --- Messaging Mechanism --- p.79Chapter 8.3 --- Nested Transaction --- p.84Chapter 8.4 --- Fault Detection --- p.85Chapter 8.5 --- Atomic Commitment Protocol --- p.88Chapter 8.5.1 --- Message Flow --- p.89Chapter 8.5.2 --- Timeout Actions --- p.91Chapter Chapter 9 --- Example --- p.93Chapter 9.1 --- System Model --- p.93Chapter 9.2 --- Auction Lifecycle --- p.94Chapter 9.2.1 --- Initialization --- p.94Chapter 9.2.2 --- Resource Gathering --- p.98Chapter 9.2.3 --- Results Delivery --- p.100Chapter Chapter 10 --- Discussions --- p.104Chapter 10.1 --- Compatibility --- p.104Chapter 10.2 --- Hierarchical Group Infrastructure --- p.106Chapter 10.3 --- Flexibility --- p.107Chapter 10.4 --- Atomicity --- p.108Chapter 10.5 --- Fault Tolerance --- p.109Chapter Chapter 11 --- Conclusion and Future Work --- p.111Chapter 11.1 --- Conclusion --- p.111Chapter 11.2 --- Future Work --- p.112Chapter 11.2.1 --- Electronic Commerce --- p.112Chapter 11.2.2 --- Workflow Management --- p.114Bibliography --- p.116Publication List --- p.12

Providing location transparent services with Java technologies : testing support of Open Distributed Processing transport transparencies in JINI, web services and JXTA

Masteroppgave i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi 2002 - Høgskolen i Agder, GrimstadThis thesis tests the presence of Open Distributed Processing (ODP) distribution transparencies in Jini, Jxta and Web Services. The thesis presents an introduction to each technology, a description of the test criteria developed, selection of prototype applications, test execution and presentation of the results. Main focus is on testing support of transparencies at the application developer and system designer level. The work has shown that all technologies support transparence types that have to do with the location of a service; location transparency and migration transparency. But when it comes to replication transparency, this is not supported by Web Services. Jini provides functions to achieve failure transparency in the JavaSpace extension; neither Web Services nor Jxta provides this

Services in pervasive computing environments : from design to delivery

The work presented in this thesis is based on the assumption that modern computer technologies are already potentially pervasive: CPUs are embedded in any sort of device; RAM and storage memory of a modern PDA is comparable to those of a ten years ago Unix workstation; Wi-Fi, GPRS, UMTS are leveraging the development of the wireless Internet. Nevertheless, computing is not pervasive because we do not have a clear conceptual model of the pervasive computer and we have not tools, methodologies, and middleware to write and to seamlessly deliver at once services over a multitude of heterogeneous devices and different delivery contexts. Our thesis addresses these issues starting from the analysis of forces in a pervasive computing environment: user mobility, user profile, user position, and device profile. The conceptual model, or metaphor, we use to drive our work is to consider the environment as surrounded by a multitude of services and objects and devices as the communicating gates between the real world and the virtual dimension of pervasive computing around us. Our thesis is thus built upon three main “pillars”. The first pillar is a domain-object-driven methodology which allows developer to abstract from low level details of the final delivery platform, and provides the user with the ability to access services in a multi-channel way. The rationale is that domain objects are self-contained pieces of software able to represent data and to compute functions and procedures. Our approach fills the gap between users and domain objects building an appropriate user interface which is both adapted to the domain object and to the end user device. As example, we present how to design, implement and deliver an electronic mail application over various platforms. The second pillar of this thesis analyzes in more details the forces that make direct object manipulation inadequate in a pervasive context. These forces are the user profile, the device profile, the context of use, and the combinatorial explosion of domain objects. From the analysis of the electronic mail application presented as example, we notice that according to the end user device, or according to particular circumstances during the access to the service (for instance if the user access the service by the interactive TV while he is having his breakfast) some functionalities are not compulsory and do not fit an adequate task sequence. So we decided to make task models explicit in the design of a service and to integrate the capability to automatically generate user interfaces for domain objects with the formal definition of task models adapted to the final delivery context. Finally, the third pillar of our thesis is about the lifecycle of services in a pervasive computing environment. Our solutions are based upon an existing framework, the Jini connection technology, and enrich this framework with new services and architectures for the deployment and discovery of services, for the user session management, and for the management of offline agents

JiniOS : the network is the computer

While computers have grown more powerful and the operating systems that drive them have become easier to use, the process for installing new hardware has changed very little from the techniques used with the earliest computers The current method for installing new devices into a computer is much too complicated even for an experienced user and often results in hours of frustration. In spite of the fact that there has been phenomenal growth both in the speed and complexity of computers and the peripherals attached to them, the process for installing these devices remains user intensive This research addresses some of the shortcomings of the current process and defines an operating system called JmiOS,which implements the solutions proposed herein JmiOS allows devices to install themselves into any computer only when they are needed, without any setup and very little user interventio