COOTS 2001 Abstract
The Design and Performance of Meta-Programming
Mechanisms for Object Request Broker Middleware
Nanbor Wang and Kirthika Parameswaran, Washington University, St. Louis; Douglas Schmidt and Ossama Othman, University of California, Irvine
Abstract
Distributed object computing (DOC) middleware shields developers
from many tedious and errorprone aspects of programming
distributed applications. Without proper support
from the middleware, however, it can be hard to evolve distributed
applications after they are deployed. Therefore, DOC
middleware should support metaprogramming mechanisms,
such as smart proxies and interceptors, that improve the adaptability
of distributed applications by allowing their behavior
to be modified without changing existing software drastically.
This paper presents three contributions to the study of metaprogramming
mechanisms for DOC middleware. First, it illustrates,
compares, and contrasts several metaprogramming
mechanisms from an application developer's perspective. Second,
it outlines the key design and implementation challenges
associated with developing smart proxies and portable interceptors
features for CORBA. Third, it presents empirical results
that pinpoint the performance impact of smart proxies
and interceptors. Our goal is to help researchers and developers
determine which metaprogramming mechanisms best suit
their application requirements.
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