In order to utilize the semantics of object methods to ensure cached object consistency, method group commutativity specifies the conditions under which a group of methods will commute. Method group commutativity is determined using a semantic specification of object methods, provided in terms of logical expressions, to create commutativity conjectures that are analyzed using the PVS theorem prover. This analysis results in the creation of a method commutativity specification (MCS), which is used by a distributed caching system to ensure the consistency of method invocations. For greater commutativity, weaker consistency requirements can be specified in the MCS. This base approach is enhanced by optimizations that consider a client's sequential execution of methods and that reduce the amount of data cached by the client. The effectiveness of method group commutativity and associated optimizations is evaluated using Java RMI application benchmarks.

Abstract Remote Method Invocation (RMI), a mechanism to access remote objects in Java‐based distributed applications, uses network communication for each method invocation. Consequently, using RMI in a wide‐area environment can cause poor application performance. One solution to improve performance is to cache the objects such that network communication is not necessary for each method invocation. In this paper, we present mechanisms to transparently add object caching to RMI. These mechanisms are compatible with existing RMI applications and use an event‐based model to support different consistency policies. The mechanisms also include the ability to adaptively select the consistency policy for an object based on its usage pattern. A novel feature of our mechanisms is the use of a ‘reduced object’, which is a partial representation of the RMI object. We experimentally evaluate and demonstrate the benefits of our mechanisms. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.