PROGRAMMING-LANGUAGES FOR MOBILE CODE

Sun's announcement of the programming language Java more than anything popularized the notion of mobile code, that is, programs traveling on a heterogeneous network and automatically executing upon arrival at t he destination. We describe several classes of mobile code and extract their common characteristics, where security proves to be one of the major concerns. With these characteristics as reference points, we exa mine six representative languages proposed for mobile code. The conclu sion of this study leads to our recommendations for future work, illus trated by examples of ongoing research.