Streaming Java']Java applications to mobile computing devices

This paper describes a streaming mechanism that distributes Java class bytecode streams to a client from a database server. Using the Java linking model, the mechanism distributes a virtual application to a client's process space allowing the deployment of dynamic component streams instead of static applications. Customized client class loaders request Java components from a class server using dedicated socket ports. The class saver uses a 1(st)-order Markov probability model to effectively predict the client's next class request. Experimental results demonstrate that class prediction can deliver a class cache hit ratio of up to 35% using a modest cache size of 64 kb on the client, whereas a 16 kb cache delivers a hit ratio of 27% The model is designed to mitigate some of the distribution and deployment problems of monolithic application software and is useful for applications running on resource constrained mobile computing devices.