Middleware awareness in mobile computing

The mobile computing domain presents major new challenges for middleware to overcome. In particular the mobile environment is characterised by frequent changes and often poor network QoS. Therefore, a number of middleware platforms and paradigms have been put forward to solve these issues. This in turn though has generated a problem i.e. middleware heterogeneity exists within this domain. As a consequence, mobile client applications developed upon one type of middleware are unable to interoperate and utilise services implemented on an alternative. In this paper, we examine the issue of middleware heterogeneity and propose a configurable and dynamically reconfigurable middleware platform, named ReMMoC (Reflective Middleware for Mobile Computing), which allows mobile client applications to be developed independently of the underlying middleware technology.