Delegating remote operation execution in a mobile computing environment

Remote operation execution is nowadays the most popular paradigm
used to build distributed systems and applications. This success
originates in the simplicity exhibited by programming along the
client--server paradigm. Unfortunately, connectivity and bandwidth
restrictions defy the unchanged porting of this well known
mechanisms to the mobile computing field.

In this paper we present an approach that allows to develop
applications which are tailored for the specific requirements of
mobile computing, while retaining the simple and well understood
remote execution paradigm. The approach provides the additional
benefit that established services could easily be used from mobile
platforms. The cornerstone of our approach is integrated linguistic
support for dynamically delegating the execution and control of
remote procedure calls (RPC) to a delegate located on the fixed part
of the network. Besides presenting the language constructs, we
discuss the extensions to the RPC--based development process and the
necessary run--time support.