A Corba Based Framework for Universal Personal Computing on the Internet

This paper presents a CORBA based framework for universal personal computing (UPC) where nomadic computing on the Internet is supported for both mobile users and mobile terminals. In the UPC environment, a mobile user, identified by a globally unique logical identifier, can access computing resources anywhere on the Internet, using any available mobile or stationary terminal attached to any network supporting UPC services. CORBA, a middleware enabling platform independent distributed object-based computing, provides a natural framework to support the UPC environment. Using CORBA technology, computing resources can be modeled as distributed objects scattered around the Internet, and access to these objects is facilitated by CORBAservices and CORBAfacilities. We first define an object-oriented model for the UPC system in which UPC components such as user agent, user terminal agent, user profile, terminal profile, and initial agent are specified as a set of distributed objects. We then describe the necessary interactions among these objects to enable various UPC services, such as user registration and authentication. The interactions between objects are performed through CORBA, which allows objects to locate each other dynamically. Finally, we discuss our implementation efforts currently in progress.