ISAM A Pervasive View in Distributed Mobile Computing Adenauer Yamin, Iara Augustin, Jorge Barbosa and Chludio Geyer Informatics Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil (adenauer, august, barbosa, geyerJ@inf.ufrgs.br Abstract: The next years will be characterized for high levels of mobility, heterogeneity and interactions among devices connected to global networks. These interconnected networks will use as much wired connections as wireless. The first researches involving wide-area distributed systems answered many questions conceming resource management, although they fail in treating questions related to heterogeneity and dynamic adaptation. More recent works, through technologies like CORBA and JavalJini, deal with heterogeneity problem, but do not deepen into adaptability aspects. In this article, we propose inside of the project ISAM, a treatment of this subject. ISAM contemplates an integrated approach of software and execution environment addressed to the administration of adaptation in heterogeneous networks, supporting the logical (software) and physical (hardware) mobility, oriented to the execution of distributed applications in aglobaI scale and based on software components. Key words: mobile computing, adaptation, pervasive computing. 1. INTRODUCTION The Mobile Computing is avision of future that promises to modify the way how people work and interact today. It has emerged as a new field, distinct from conventional distributed computing by its focus on mobility and its consequence. The physical and logical mobility allows the creation of applications with news requirements: built-in mobility, adaptability and flexibility. The adaptation is a fundamental concept for mobile computing [2]. However, adaptation is not easy for implementing. Traditional distributed © The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35620-4_43 D. Gaïti et al. (eds.), Network Control and Engineering for QoS, Security and Mobility IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2003