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Design

The three main goals for the design of the distributed file system are (in order of priority):

1. It should enable applications to utilize any desired level of optimism or pessimism,
2. it should enable applications to adapt their behaviour according to different communication characteristics (or user demands), and
3. it should be easy to port existing application to use the new file system.

I believe that the first goal can be achieved by basing the implementation on the model proposed in [34], and the second goal by utilizing and refining the facilities provided by the TACO layer [11]. The third goal will be achieved by designing a well-defined, easy-to-use, and easy-to-understand (simple) interface to the services provided by the new file system.

By reaching these goals I hope to be able to design a distributed file system that is well suited for mobile computing by being simple, yet flexible and powerful.