Team presentation

The overall goal of the SARDES project-team is to investigate the construction of distributed software infrastructures (operating system and middleware) to support global computing. Global computing is concerned with a projected environment in which processors will be everywhere and will be interconnected by a diverse array of networks, from ad-hoc pico networks to the global Internet.

In this large scale, open, highly heterogeneous and highly dynamic context, the SARDES project-team aims to develop dependable and highly adaptable software infrastructures, by systematically leveraging component-based and reflective programming techniques.

Research themes

Research in the SARDES project-team is organized around 4 main themes. The first two themes (architecture and kernels) develop new software technology which is exploited by the other two themes (system management and mobile multimedia Web).

• Distributed reflective system architecture. This theme is concerned with the definition and formal specification of new distributed programming models and of architectural patterns for the construction of large scale open distributed systems
• Infrastructure kernels. This theme is concerned with the prototyping and experimental validation of distributed reflective kernels for different hardware and software environments (including PDAs and mobile phones, as well as PC clusters). Work on this theme proceeds at both the operating system and middleware levels.
• Distributed system management. This theme is concerned with the prototyping of monitoring, control and dynamic configuration management functions for large scale open distributed systems.
• Mobile multimedia Web infrastructure. This theme is concerned with the prototyping of adaptable infrastructures for new Web services implying mobile devices such as PDAs or mobile phones, and multimedia content.

In addition, the SARDES project-team contributes to the development of the ObjectWeb code base (ObjectWeb is an international consortium for the construction of open source middleware).

International and industrial relations

The SARDES project-team is involved in several national, international and industrial cooperations:

European IST projects : Ozone (with Philips and Thomson Multimedia) and Mikado (with U. of Sussex, U. of Florence, U. of Lisbon and France Telecom R&D).

• IST network of excellence CaberNet.
• AIR-D virtual laboratory (with Philips and Thomson Multimedia).
• French RNRT projects Parol (with Evidian, France Telecom R&D, AFNOR), Phenix (with U. Paris 6).
• French RNTL Projects Arcad (with U. Nice, France Telecom R&D, Ecole des Mines de Nantes) and Impact (with Evidian, Schlumberger, France Telecom, U. Paris 6, U. Lille, etc).

In addition, the SARDES project-team plays a key role in the ObjectWeb consortium and has several bilateral industrial cooperations, notably with HP, Bull and France Telecom R&D.