A component-based approach to build a portable and flexible middleware for metacomputing

The huge amount of computing resources in the Internet makes it possible to build metacomputersfor solving large-scale problems. Despite the great availability of software infrastructuresfor managing such systems, metacomputer programming is often based onmodels that do not appear to be suitable to run applications on wide-area, unreliable,highly-variable networks of computers. In this paper, we present a customisable, Java-basedmiddleware which provides programmers with a portable and flexible framework to run applicationsover a hierarchical, virtual network architecture. The middleware is designed accordingto a component-based approach that enables the execution behaviour of each computingnode to be customised in order to satisfy application needs. The paper shows some examplesof programming model customisation and demonstrates that flexibility can be achieved withoutsignificantly compromising performance.