The Design and Performance of a Meta-Level Mobile Component for Video Delivery

Abstract

This paper presents an example of how to design a mobile component based on meta-level programming. The approach programs mobile-awareness into an existing mobile-transparent distributed program. We achieve adaptability of an existing design by moving the activation and bindings of key components into a meta-level adaptation layer. By moving this responsibility away from the application design, we allow run-time reconfiguration such as component replacement and migration to occur without intruding upon application functionality. A generalized meta-level architecture is presented as a systematic, non-intrusive approach to building mobile-awareness into existing component architectures. We use a simple video delivery component architecture to illustrate the approach and analyze the performance of dynamic (re)configuration, component replacement, and migration.