Expressive and Extensible Parameter Passing for Distributed Object Systems

Abstract

In modern distributed object systems, reference parameters to a remote method are passed according to their runtime type. This design choice limits the expressiveness, readability, and maintainability of distributed applications. Further, to extend the built-in set of parameter passing semantics of a distributed object system, the programmer has to understand and modify the underlying middleware implementation. To address these design shortcomings, this article presents (i) a declarative and extensible approach to remote parameter passing that decouples parameter passing semantics from parameter types, and (ii) a plugin-based framework, DeXteR , which enables the programmer to extend the built-in set of remote parameter passing semantics, without having to understand or modify the underlying middleware implementation. DeXteR treats remote parameter passing as a distributed cross-cutting concern and uses aspect-oriented and generative techniques. DeXteR enables the implementation of different parameter passing semantics as reusable application-level plugins, applicable to application, system, and third-party library classes. The expressiveness, flexibility, and extensibility of the approach is validated by adding several nontrivial remote parameter passing semantics (i.e., copy-restore, lazy, streaming) to Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) as DeXteR plugins.