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Distribution of Data and Remote Invocation of

Programs

Tomasz Müldner, Zhonghai Luo and Elhadi Shakshuki* Jodrey School of Computer Science, Acadia University,

Wolfville, NS, Canada

* presenting

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Contents of the Talk

• General goals for systems that implement data distribution and remote program invocation

• Distributed Installer, DI

• Related products

• Conclusions

• Future Work

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General Goals

• Platform Independence• Security• Scalability• Pull and Push• Efficiency• Synchronization• Fault Tolerance• Flexibility• Selective Choice• Remote Invocation

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DI: Data Distribution

• Two kinds of applications:– subscriber expresses interest in some data

that can be provided by a publisher– publisher selects subscribers and specifies

data to be sent to these subscribers.

• A single application may be at the same time both, a publisher and a subscriber

• SSL is used to support secure transmission

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DI: Channel

• An abstract concept that represents a virtual, unidirectional connection between two nodes

(similar to a pipe used in P2P systems). • Two kinds of channels:

– P-channel, created by a publisher.– S-channel, created by a subscriber.

• Each channel has– name– optional description

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DI: P-channel

Each channel specifies the source of its data, i.e. the directory in the file system on the publisher’s computer.

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DI: P-channel

• the publisher can push, or distribute some or all of P-channels to one or more selected subscribers

• when the subscriber receives the incoming P-channel, it will automatically create the corresponding S-channel based on– publisher's IP and port number– the name of the P-channel.

• any data in the P-channel will be pushed into the newly created S-channel.

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Publisher’s Configuration Files

• publisher.properties (static)– port number on which the publisher will send

data;– a root directory for storing all channels’

description;– the filename and password for the keystore

used to establish secure SSL communication path;

• target.properties (static)– lists all potential subscribers.

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Subscriber’s Configuration Files

• subscriber.properties– port number for receiving data;– a root directory for storing all incoming channels’ data;– a channel creation type– the filename and password for the keystore used to

establish secure SSL communication path;– a security flag indicating whether or not the data

transmission is secure (true by default);– a channel update type– a channel update option

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Relative Virtual Mapping

Example:1. A publisher P creates a channel "quote", and specifies

the corresponding directory "c:\program\quote".2. A publisher distributes the "quote" channel to a

subscriber S with all channel data (it will include all files and sub-directories under "c:\program\quote").

3. In S, a channel named "quote" is automatically created, and all received data (files and sub-directories) are stored with the original hierarchy under the root channel directory(specified in the configuration file subscriber.properties)

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S-channel

• the S-channel is the reference to the corresponding P-channel

• typically created automatically by subscriber software when receiving incoming P-channels pushed by publishers

• the subscriber can also manually create an S-channel:

• the subscriber must know in advance the available channel names in publisher side

• if the channel name specified in S-channel does not exist in publisher side, this S-channel is invalid, just like that you set wrong frequency for a TV station channel.

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S-channel

GUI with buttons to create, modify, delete S-channels, and update the selected S-channel, i.e. pull data for this channel from specified publisher side.

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New S-channel

•An address of the publisher node

• channel name

• description,

• update type and option (they can also be used for an existing S-channel, this way, the subscriber can control the way data are received)

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Remote Invocation

To distribute and to invoke components C1, C2, C3:1. A publisher (on N) creates three channels; one for each

of N1, N2 and N3.2. The publisher specifies the Main class in the descriptor

file app.xml file (explained in the next slide) for each channel.

3. The publisher adds addresses of N1, N2 and N3 to the file target.properties.

4. The publisher distributes all channels to three subscribers

5. The publisher uses the "remote start" button

Components: C1 C2 C3Machine N

Machine N1 Machine N2 Machine N3

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XML-based Descriptor

Defines the startup class for the distributed program and the necessary path information to load dependent classes for this program, for example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><App name="CS Lab course"><MainClass> ca.acadiau.cs.Lab </MainClass><ClassPath> client.jar </ClassPath></App>Should be located in the channel and sent to the subscriber

along with other channel’s content.

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Related Work

• UNISON, a file-synchronization tool• Idem, a File Synchronization and Folder

Replication utility • SFTP Plugin for Eclipse, provides file and

directory synchronization• DI, a platform independent system that:

– uses SSL to support security– supports both; push and pull model, – one to one and one to many synchronization, with

selective choice of files and directories. – provides a limited form of remote program invocation.

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Conclusion

DI satisfies goals for applications that implement remote file synchronization

and remote program invocation