The Cell Project: Component Technology for the Internet

We propose a new component model with a focus on the needs of Internet components, mainly dynamism and security. It is based around the concept of a cell—a new programming abstraction with component-specific responsibilities. At the heart of it is the introduction of a persistent link mode of interaction into components. In existing technologies (COM/Corba/Java Beans), components interact exclusively by obtaining handles to other components on runtime and then invoking operations via interfaces. With persistent links, components are developed assuming some imports given; then on runtime they must link to other components which will provide the implementations for the imports, via exports. Cells include both models of interaction in one entity. Supported features include cross-network persistent linking, cells as containers of objects, a connection-based security mechanism, and cross-component class inheritance. These features are expected to prove especially beneficial for components in the Internet.