Mobility control in distributed object-oriented applications

Object-oriented programming for distributed systems provides support for location-independent remote object invocations while preserving the ability to control object placement explicitly using mobility operations. The author investigates problems with this approach and proposes a higher-level control of object placement for distributed object-oriented applications. This control mechanism is based on a conceptual object-relationship model. Using a priori knowledge about object communication behavior, appropriate mobility decisions can be performed by a runtime control component. The central thesis is that distribution aspects can be separated from application semantics explicitly. An experimental prototype system to study these issues is described.<>