Towards a generic architecture for mobile object-oriented applications

Our previous work in mobility support for CORBA applications resulted in the design and implementation of the Architecture for Location-Independent CORBA Environments (ALICE). The first version of ALICE enabled CORBA objects running on mobile devices to interact transparently with objects hosted by off-the-shelf CORBA implementations without relying on a centralised location register to keep track of their whereabouts. This paper presents the second version of ALICE on which work is ongoing. The improved architecture retains the features of the original and adds support for disconnected operation in the form of caching of server functionality on the client side. Furthermore, the architecture is being generalised beyond CORBA in order to make it applicable to other distribution infrastructures, such as Java RMI and DCOM.