DOVE: a distributed object visualization environment
Michael Kircher, Douglas C. Schmidt · 1999
Large-scale distributed systems typically contain many heterogeneous components [16]. To manage these types of systems, applications and administrators must be able to monitor the status and proper functioning of system resources. This paper describes the design and use of a distributed object visualization environment (DOVE) that supports monitoring and visualization of applications and services in heterogeneous distributed systems. In this paper, we use DOVE as an exemplar to illustrate how frameworks and components, such as CORBA services and Java Beans, can be combined with patterns, such as Visitor and Observer, to build reusable, scalable, and maintainable software monitoring tools and distributed applications. DOVE itself is a framework, which provides an integrated set of components that defines a reusable architecture for a family of related monitoring and visualization applications. Conventional monitoring and visualization tools, such as BMC Patrol [1] or IBM NetView, have generally evolved without explicit concern for software qualities like modularity, reuse, or flexibility. Therefore, it’s hard for these legacy tools to adapt rapidly to changing application requirements and endsystem/network environments. Support for adaptability is important since requirements of customers and environmental changes force developers to constantly maintain and enhance their software. In this paper, we illustrate how DOVE achieves a high degree of modularity, reuse, and flexibility by using OO techniques, patterns, CORBA, Java, and C++. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives an overview of the DOVE software architecture; Section 3 de-