🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MORSE.91Feb12152547@quark.mpr.ca> morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse) writes:
>OSI is pretty clearly aimed at the connection of systems.

>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?

One of the three main aims of ODP is to provide distribution transparency
which should blur the distinction between local and remote.
To that end, ODP wants to see communication between co-located
and non-co-located applications done via the same interface.

Whether the implementation of those interfaces is smart enough to realize
that some light-weight mechanism can be used in certain circumstances
depends on those implementing the lower-level protocols. 

I suspect that the problem is that the lightest-weight mechanism is usually
the local IPC mechanism. However, the implementer wants to write something
very portable which can run on many machines and hence isn't interested
in including local IPC calls.

>Perhaps I'm just impatient, and these issues will be addressed by the ODP work?

I doubt that ODP will address the light-weight mechanism issue. I believe
that the ODP group would regard that as a problem for lower layers of the
OSI stack.

===============================================================================
Dr Kerry Raymond, R & D Engineer                     kerry@citrus.citr.uq.oz.au
Centre for Information Technology Research                Phone: +61 7 365-4321
University of Queensland 4072 Australia                     Fax: +61 7 365-4399