Resumen

Resumen
The expected growth of ubiquitous computing over the next five years will further alter the nature of the computational infrastructure, bringing a plethora of small devices and requiring customized protocols and policies to fulfill users' evolving quality of service requirements. During the past few years, existing implementations of traditional middleware have incorporated some innovations produced through research in reflective middleware. Despite the usefulness of these features, support for customization and dynamic adaptation in mainstream middleware systems does not cover all aspects of a platform's life cycle. Reflection, on the other hand, offers a truly generic solution to the problem with a principled approach to middleware design that yields openness. Finally, reflection permits the manipulation and adaptation of different aspects of a platform in ways not anticipated during its design. Reflective middleware is flexible and reconfigurable yet simple for programmers to use, notably for building dynamic distributed applications operating on the Internet. INSETS: Basic Reflection Terminology; Other Reflective Middleware Implementations.