DOA 2004 International Conference (Distributed Objects and Applications) PC Co-Chairs’ Message

Distributed objects and applications have been an important element of research and industrial computing for over 20 years. Early research on RPC systems, asynchronous messaging, specialized distributed programming languages, and component architectures led to the industrial-strength distributed objects platforms such as CORBA, DCOM, and J2EE that became commonplace over the past decade. Continued research and evolution in these areas, along with the explosive growth of the Internet and World Wide Web, have now carried us into areas such as peer-to-peer computing, mobile applications, model-driven architecture, distributed real-time and embedded systems, grid computing, and web services. Distributed objects are not only today’s workhorse for mission-critical high-performance enterprise computing systems, but they also continue to serve as a research springboard into new areas of innovation.