Motivation for Typed Authenticated Message Boxes. Interfaces should have types and a set of active objects authorized to communicate through that interface, just as only certain people are authorized to call the president on the emergency phone line. Motivation for Asynchronous Communication. The programmer can write programs that wait for acknowledgments or that do not wait but expect exceptions to be raised if messages are not delivered. Overview of How Requirements Influence Design.
Active objects carry out tasks for individuals or groups.
They are proxies for the people and resources they serve. Therefore, in our design, workflow is defined in terms of messages flowing from active object to active object. Addesses and interface definitions of inboxes can be found on the Web. We will show later that the software infrastructure for active object networks is both simple and small, and it has the functionality to support mobile intelligent agents. Next, we discuss the design in greater detail.