CARP@ - A reflection based tool for observing Jini services

Jini (TM) offers the basic technology to develop distributed systems where the participating clients, services and their interactions can adapt dynami cally to a changing environment.(1) To monitor the internal processes in su ch a system a reflection mechanism is necessary. However, the existing refl ection mechanisms in Java emerged to be too weak to supply enough informati on for a suitable management of such a system. Therefore these mechanisms h ad to be extended by a reflective meta level upon Jini. The tool CARP@ (imp lemented itself as Jini system) is designed to visualize, analyze and contr ol dynamic and distributed Jini systems. This is done by developing a meta architecture upon a Jini system that reflects the running Jini system. This paper describes the meta architecture, the tool to monitor it and repo rts the gained experiences together with their implied consequences.