Mobile RMI: Supporting Remote Access to Java Server Objects on Mobile Hosts

Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is a specification for building distributed object-oriented applications. RMI was designed primarily for use in conventional, wired computing environments and provides no mechanisms to allow objects hosted by mobile, wireless-enabled computers to interact with other RMI objects. Mobile devices regularly change their point of connection to the Internet making the task of correctly locating and invoking methods on the hosted RMI server objects difficult. The nature of wireless communication also means that the TCP/IP connections used to access these RMI objects are frequently broken, potentially resulting in data being lost and leaving the two communicating parties in inconsistent states. This paper outlines an architecture that supports such mobile RMI objects and describes an implementation of this architecture and its performance. This architecture provides mobility support in the form of two main components. The first is a session layer component that provides the low-level support services required to maintain transport connections in a mobile environment. The second is an application layer component that uses application-level proxies to address the difficulties of invoking methods on mobile RMI servers.