Enhancing Java to Support Object Groups

In this paper we show how to enhancing the Java RMI framework to support object groups. The package we have developed allows programmers to dynamically deal with groups of servers all implementing the same interface. Our group mechanism can be used both to improve reliability preventing system failures and to implement processor farm parallelism. Each service request dispatched to an object group returns all the values computed by the group members permitting the implementation of both kind of applications. Moreover, these approaches differ both over computations failure and over the semantic of the implemented interface. Our extension is achieved enriching the classic RMI framework and the existing RMI registry with new functionalities. From user’s point of view the multicast RMI acts just like the traditional RMI system, and really the same architecture has been used.