ABSTRACT
Today’s distributed systems are composed of a diverse range of devices spread across different sites. Communication between devices is increasingly wireless. Providing open distributed processing between geographically and organizationally distributed work groups significantly helps to gain the flexibility to adjust robustly to business reengineering and environmental/technological change. This mission has depended on middleware during the past decade, and with the increase of network complexity, such as the introduction of various wireless networks, the demand on middleware is significantly increasing (see more mobile computing specific requirements in the next section). Such systems must be supported by effective, flexible, simple and comprehensible processes, with requirements being captured through modeling tools that provide readily usable notations for their clear representation.
