µCODE: A Lightweight and Flexible Mobile Code Toolkit

Although a thorough evaluation of mobile code technology does not exist yet, some studies already evidenced that the powerful (and often heavyweight) abstractions and mechanisms proposed so far are not always flexible enough to fully exploit the benefits of migrating code. μ Code is a new mobile code toolkit designed to be flexible, extensible, and lightweight. Its small set of abstractions and mechanisms can be used directly by the programmer or composed in higher-level abstractions—mobile agents included. This paper discusses the fundamental concepts and features of μ Code, together with its rationale and motivation.