Using An XML Database To Coordinate Communication Between Mobile Computations On The Internet

One approach for sharing resources on the Internet is to use mobile computations (programs that can commence execution at one site, discover a need for a resource at a different site, halt execution, migrate, and continue execution at the new site). Migrating an executing process is a non-trivial task that is exacerbated by the heterogeneity and security concerns of the computing infrastructure. Native support for strongly mobile computations is an essential prerequisite for a user-friendly programming environment that can produce efficient and secure grid / Internet applications. Our prototype of a mobile computational model enables creation and execution of mobile computations. Communication between executing mobile computations within the model is a significant issue that we address in this paper. We discuss the motivation for, and design of, our solution of using an XML database to facilitate communication between computations that may be located on geographically widespread hosts