Experiences of using generative communications to support adaptive mobile applications

Attention has recently begun to focus on the use of asynchronous paradigms to support adaptive mobile applications. To investigate this issue the auth ors have developed an asynchronous distributed systems platform based on th e tuple space paradigm [19] coupled with extensions to support operation in mobile environments. This paper presents our experiences of developing and using this platform. The benefits of the tuple space approach are highligh ted and we discuss in some detail the design, implementation and performanc e of our platform. We subsequently focus on the critical issues of the tupl e space API and the level of support for adaptation which can be provided w ithout compromising the elegance and simplicity of the paradigm. The paper concludes with an analysis of the suitability of platforms based on the tup le space paradigm for use in mobile environments.