Abstract
Mobile computing environments are characterised by significant and rapid changes in their supporting infrastructure and, in particular, in the quality-of-service (QoS) available from their underlying communications channels. Applications which can operate in these environments and take advantage of changing QoS require distributed systems support platforms. The current state-of-the-art in such platforms attempt to provide synchronous connection-oriented programming paradigms reflecting their fixed network origin. In this paper we argue that these paradigms are not well suited to operation in a mobile environment and instead propose a new platform called Limbo based on the tuple space communications paradigm. The design of Limbo is presented together with details of two prototype implementations. The use of the platform to re-engineer a number of existing adaptive mobile applications is also discussed.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
APM Limited (1989) ANSA: An Engineers Introduction to the Architecture. Technical Document release TR.03.02, APM Cambridge Limited, Poseidon House, Castle Park, Cambridge, CB3 ORD, U.K.
Bjornson, R., Carriero, N., Gelernter, D., Mattson, T., Kaminsky, D. and Sherman, A. (1991) Experience with Linda. Technical Report YALEU/DCS/TR-866, Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Carriero, N., Gelernter, D. and Zuck, L. (1994) Bauhaus Linda. Selected Papers from the Workshop on Models and Languages for Coordination of Parallelism and Distribution (ECOOP ’84), Bologna, Italy, 66–76.
Coulouris, G.F., Dollimore J. and Kindberg, T. (1994) Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design (Second Edition). Addison-Wesley.
Davies, N., Pink, S. and Blair, G.S. (1994) Services to Support Distributed Applications in a Mobile Environment. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Services in Distributed and Networked Environments (SDNE’94), Prague, Czech Republic, 8489.
Davies, N., Blair, G.S., Cheverst, K. and Friday, A. (1994) Supporting Adaptive Services in a Heterogeneous Mobile Environment. Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (MCSA’94), Santa Cruz, California, U.S., 153–157.
Davies, N., Blair, G.S., Cheverst, K. and Friday, A. (1995) Experiences of Using RM-ODP to Build Advanced Mobile Applications. Distributed Systems Engineering Journal, 2 (3), 142–151.
Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., McCanne, S., Lui, C. and Zhang, L. (1995) A Reliable Multicast Framework for Light-Weight Sessions and Application Level Framing. Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM ’85, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., 342–356.
Friday, A.J., Blair, G.S., Cheverst, K.W.J. and Davies, N. (1996) Extensions to ANSAware for Advanced Mobile Applications. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Distributed Platforms (ICDP’96), Dresden, Germany.
Friday, A., Wade, S.P., Davies, N. and Blair, G.S. (1997) Using Tuple Spaces for Adaptive Mobile Computing. Technical Report MPG-97–03, Computing Department, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster, LAI 4YR, U.K.
Gelernter, D. (1985) Generative Communication in Linda. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 7 (1), 80–112.
Gelernter, D., Carriero, N., Chandran, S. and Chang, S. (1985) Parallel Programming in Linda. Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing, 255–263.
Grönvall, B., Marsh I. and Pink, S. (1996) A Multicast-Based Distributed File System for the Internet, Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop, Connemara, Ireland.
Hupfer, S. (1990) Melinda: Linda with Multiple Tuple Spaces. Technical Report YALEU/DCS/RR-766, Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
ISO (1992) Draft Recommendation X.901: Basic Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing - Part 1: Overview and Guide to Use. Draft Report.
Joseph, A.D., deLespinasse, A.F., Tauber, J.A., Gifford, D.K. and Kaashoek, M.F. (1995) Rover: A Toolkit for Mobile Information Access. Proceedings of the 15th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP’95), Copper Mountain Resort, Colorado, U.S., 156–171.
Katz, R.H. (1994) Adaptation and Mobility in Wireless Information Systems. IEEE Personal Communications, 1 (1), 6–17.
Leichter, J.S. (1989) Shared Tuple Memories, Shared Memories, Buses and LAN’s - Linda Implementations across the Spectrum of Connectivity. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Minsky, N.H. and Leichter, J. (1994) Law-Governed Linda as a Coordination Model. Selected Papers from the Workshop on Models and Languages for Coordination of Parallelism and Distribution, Bologna, Italy, 125–146.
Pinakis, J. (1991) The Design and Implementation of a Distributed Linda Tuple Space. Proceedings of the 2nd Department of Computer Science Research Conference, Department of Computer Science, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009.
Pinakis, J. (1992) Providing Directed Communication in Linda. Proceedings of the 15th Australian Computer Science Conference, Hobart, Tasmania.
Pinakis, J. (1993) Remote Thread Execution, Proceedings of the 16th Australian Computer Science Conference, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Pinakis, J. (1993) Using Linda as the Basis of an Operating System Microkernel. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia.
Schilit, B., Adams, N. and Want, R. (1994) Context-Aware Computing Applications. Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (MCSA’94), Santa Cruz, California, U.S., 85–90.
Schill, A. and Kummel, S. (1995) Design and Implementation of a Support Platform for Distributed Mobile Computing. Distributed Systems Engineering Journal, 2 (3), 128–141.
Yeadon, N. (1996) Using TETRA to Support Distributed Multimedia Applications. Technical Report, Computing Department, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster, LA1 4YR, U.K.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davies, N., Wade, S.P., Friday, A., Blair, G.S. (1997). Limbo: A tuple space based platform for adaptive mobile applications. In: Rolia, J., Slonim, J., Botsford, J. (eds) Open Distributed Processing and Distributed Platforms. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35188-9_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35188-9_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-5041-2962-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35188-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive