Autonomy over Ubiquity: Coping with the Complexity of a Distributed World.
Alfons Kemper, Peter C. Lockemann, Guido Moerkotte, Hans‐Dirk Walter, Stefan M. Lang · 1990
Today's distributed database systems adhere to the principle of ubiquity such that all the information is everywhere available in an equitable fashion. This transparent data distribution leads to at least two severe problems. First, the complexity becomes unmanageable if one tries to impose a centralized control upon the computer model of the "real" world, that is naturally distributed. Second, if at all possible, the centralized control of ubiquity would be prohibitively expensive in terms of performance. We argue that the paradigm of ubiquity should be replaced by object autonomy in a distributed, persistent environment. The objects have built-in control over many important aspects that were previously controlled centrally: the life cycle, the cooperation control, and the distribution control. We describe the functionality of such an autonomous object model in metaphorical terms, concentrating on internal object aspects, inter-object communication and distributed infrastructure. We ...