Supporting Dynamic Reconfiguration in the dynamicTAO Reflective ORB
Manuel Román, Fábio Kon, Roy H. Campbell · 1999
Communication middleware systems provide a solid basis for the construction of distributed applications. However, they usually lack the mechanisms for runtime reconfiguration of the middleware engine. The performance of distributed applications is greatly affected by dynamic changes on the characteristics of the environment such as memory, CPU, and network availability. Existing communication middleware do not react in front of these changes. Most of the times, applications have enough knowledge to decide what to do in front of an environmental change, but they cannot use that knowledge because the middleware does not allow on-the-fly reconfiguration. We have developed dynamicTAO, a CORBA-compliant reflective ORB that supports runtime reconfiguration. dynamicTAO maintains an explicit representation of its own internal structure and uses it to carry out dynamic customization safely. This report describes the problems encountered during the design and implementation of our architectural frame...