Security-enabled code deployment for heterogeneous networks

Future services on converged heterogeneous networks are expected to increase the demand for code distribution on fly installment and dynamic management. Component discovery, download, installation, revocation, and profiling are critical in supporting next-generation enabling technologies and application evolvement. We present here the architecture of an active component manager and discuss metadata that should be used to describe components and their capabilities. Furthermore, we elaborate on XML digital signatures as an integral part of secure component distribution. Finally we investigate topologies for component distribution and how emerging technologies like peer-to-peer could be used in the context of active component manager. This paper is motivated by the vision of Google-like code discovery, and flexible management of it, within the future semantic web context.