[ Software Research Group ]

Unified Object Bus

The Unifed Object Bus (UOB) provides a framework for the aggregation of diverse distributed object and web based communication schemes into a common mechanism to access objects within an Active Space.  The UOB provides the basic mechanisms for packaging, loading, and deploying software components into the system. It is built as an abstraction layer over specific component architectures such as DCOM, CORBA, and Enterprise Java Beans. This will allow the construction of complex software systems by integrating the components implemented using any of these different architectures. Interoperability will be achieved by instantiating inter-architecture bridges either statically or dynamically.

The goals of the UOB are: 1) provide a minimum component model kernel that can fit devices with limited resources, 2) define a reflective architecture that allows introspection of its state as well as dynamic modifications, and finally 3) define a standard mechanism to transparently incorporate new existing component models. Dynamic behavior is essential since it allows expanding and shrinking the bus according to the execution environment properties. The unified object bus, as depicted in Figure 1, provides a common underlying infrastructure that allows interoperation of heterogeneous devices running different operating systems and middleware implementations.

Of special interested is the study of integrating handheld devices into the distributed infrastructure and how it can be used to allow users access to customized services and data.