| The Internet is composed of heterogeneous networks, equipment, operating systems and software. This diversity coupled with security concerns make creation and management of Internet applications more complicated than traditional ones in a static and well-defined environment. The need for a different approach to address these issues has given birth to a new programming paradigm—Internet Programming. Internet Programming envisages being able to harness the power of the Internet, by sharing resources and information in a secure and efficient manner, through mobile code, mobile agents, or mobile computations. Our research is primarily concerned with mobile computations, i.e., computations that can commence execution at one host, move to other hosts on a heterogeneous network, and continue execution from where they left off. We present a mobile computational model that can fully support the Internet Programming paradigm and mobile computations since it is specially designed for the purpose and is able to deal efficiently with the heterogeneity, instability, and security concerns of the Internet. The mobile computational model includes an object-oriented programming language, the Mobile Computation Language (MCL), and the Mobile Computation System (MCS) which is comprised of the Mobile Computation Manager of the model to enable us to make assertions about its behavior. Analysis of the model reveals that significant benefits are to be gained by designing and implementing a system specifically for Internet Programming. |
