Coyote: A System for Constructing Fine-Grain Configurable CommunicationServices

  • Authors:
  • Nina T. Bhatti;Matti A. Hiltunen;Richard D. Schlichting;Wanda Chiu

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • Coyote: A System for Constructing Fine-Grain Configurable CommunicationServices
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

Communication-oriented abstractions such as atomic multicast, group RPC, and protocols for location-independent mobile computing can simplify the development of complex applications built on distributed systems. This paper describes Coyote, a system that supports the construction of highly modular and configurable versions of such abstractions. Coyote extends the notion of protocol objects and hierarchical composition found in existing systems with support for finer-grain objects called micro-protocols that implement individual semantic properties of the target service. A customized service is constructed by selecting micro-protocols based on their semantic guarantees and configuring them together with a standard runtime system to form a composite protocol implementing the service. Micro-protocols within a composite protocol can share data and are executed using an event-driven paradigm that enhances configurability. The overall approach is described and illustrated with examples of services that have been constructed using Coyote, including atomic multicast, group RPC, membership, and mobile computing protocols. A prototype implementation based on extending {\it x}-kernel version 3.2 running on Mach MK82 with support for micro-protocols is also presented, together with performance results from a suite of micro-protocols from which over 60 variants of group RPC can be constructed.