An Object-Oriented Invocation Layer for the Java Message Service

New applications and software environments are increasingly distributed across a large or even unpredictable number of networked computing devices, require mobile and ad-hoc networking capabilities, and must integrate with more systems, all of which create greater demands on the middleware used to realize these systems. On the Java platform, RMI is a well-established paradigm, yet deficiencies become evident in particular with regard to scalability and remote invocation completability – which is the assurance that invocations are executed according to client and service expectations regardless of the state of the participants or the communication network. While the Java Message Service (JMS) addresses these deficiencies, it lacks the simplicity, explicit contracts, clear coupling, and strong typing of an object-oriented invocation paradigm. This paper will describe our Java Invocation Layer for Messaging (JILM), a(n) (a)synchronous invocation layer to support object-oriented invocations while leveraging the unique distribution and QoS properties that JMS provides.