🚀 go-pugleaf

In all of the reading on OSI (both standards and otherwise) that I
have done, I have noticed what seems to be an inconsistency in the
conceptual model that forms the basis for the OSI.

The seeming "inconsistency" is as follows: In both name, and in the
actual protocols that are in the stack, OSI is pretty clearly aimed at
the connection of systems. We can see this by virtue of the types of
end to end communications that have been standardized. All are aimed
at system to system communication. However, if you look at the
structure of the application layer, the picture seems to change.
Indeed, the name of the upper-most layer seems to verify that the OSI
is also aimed at the connection of applications. This is reinforced by
the preliminary work that I have reviewed on the ODP (Open Distributed
Processing) Reference Model. This also seems to be clearly aimed
providing transparent distribution at the application level.

Why, then, is there no light-weight mechanism for applications to
communicate with other applications that might happen to be located on
the same system? If I don't want my application to know where it is,
or where the applications that it communicates with are, shouldn't
that be addressed (no pun intended) by the stack? Surely, I shouldn't
be reasonably expected to use X.25, or FDDI, for IPC. (Something
related to this is the lack of a decent performing name service. X.500
is clearly not a great name service for an RPC.)

Am I all wet here, and it really isn't the intention of the OSI that
application entities might reside on the same system? Perhaps I'm just
impatient, and these issues will be addressed by the ODP work?

If you have any thoughts on these matters, I would be most interested
in hearing them. Thanks.
--
Daryl Morse                     | Voice : (604) 293-5476
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