Emerald is an object-based language and system designed for the construction of distributed programs. An explicit goal of Emerald is support for object mobility; objects in Emerald can freely move within the system to take advantage of distribution and dynamically changing environments. We say that Emerald has fine-grained mobility because Emerald objects can be small data objects as well as process objects. Fine-grained mobility allows us to apply mobility in new ways but presents implementation problems as well. This paper discusses the benefits of tine-grained mobility, the Emerald language and run-time mechanisms that support mobility, and techniques for implementing mobility that do not degrade the performance of local operations. Performance measurements of the current implementation are included.
Jul et al. (Mon,) studied this question.