A distributed object-oriented framework for dependable multiparty interaction

摘要

In programming distributed object-oriented systems, there are several approaches for achieving binary interactions in a multiprocess environment. Usually these approaches take care only of synchronisation or communication. In this paper we describe a way of designing and implementing a more general concept: multiparty interactions. In a multiparty interaction, several parties (objects or processes) somehow "come together" to produce an intermediate and temporary combined state, use this state to execute some activity, and then leave this interaction and continue their normal execution. The concept of multiparty interactions has been investigated by several researchers, but to the best of our knowledge none have considered how failures in one or more participants of the multiparty interaction can be dealt with. In this paper, we propose a general scheme for constructing dependable multiparty interactions in a distributed object-oriented system, and describe its implementation in Java. In particular, we extend the notion of multiparty interaction to include facilities for handling exceptions. To show how our scheme can be used, we use our framework to build an abstraction mechanism that supports cooperative and competitive concurrency in distributed systems. This mechanism is then applied to program a system in which multiparty interactions are more than simple synchronisations or communications.