A CORBA Environment Supporting Mobile Objects

This paper is targeted for input to the new OMG Agent Special Interest Group and describes a way how to integrate object mobility into a CORBA environment. The studies on which this paper is based are currently performed in the context of Mobile Agent Technology (MAT). However, since just the mobility aspect is handled (and not autonomy which is the only commonly agreed characteristic of a software agent), the term 'agent' is avoided in this paper, and the term 'object' is used instead. The objective is to develop a flexible, unified, prototypical CORBA environment, supporting both remote interactions and object migration, only by considering already existing CORBA services as a basis, determining missing functionality, and specifying a minimal set of new functionality in order to fill the gap. This initial model shall be taken as the basis for discussions within the CORBA community with the purpose to start an initiative in the OMG.