Sensors are methods used to probe an object's state and actuators are methods used to change an object's state. The management program is capable to prod the application program into action by activating sensors and acturators available at the interface of the application program. Actions are determined by management policies that are encoded in the management program. This way of structuring the management system encourages a clear modularization of application and management distributed programs, allowing better separation of concerns. Managemental concerns can be dealt with by the management program, functional concerns can be assigned to the application program.
Object orientation provides modularity and extensibility through object encapsulation.
Atomic actions guarantee the consistency of the objects of the distributed program despite concurrency and failures. Replication of the distributed program provides increased fault-tolerance by guaranteeing the consistent progress of the computation, even though some of the replicated objects can fail. Example applications have been implemented to illustrate the use of the management system and gather experimental evidence to give support to the thesis.