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From: darrell@sdcsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.os
Subject: Re: Why no "real" distributed system?
Message-ID: <2717@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Fri, 13-Feb-87 01:11:20 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.2717
Posted: Fri Feb 13 01:11:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Feb-87 13:47:15 EST
Sender: darrell@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Organization: TI Process Automation Center, Dallas
Lines: 45
Approved: mod-os@sdcsvax.uucp
Posted-Date: Fri, 13 Feb 87 00:11:20 cst

Marty Fouts brought up several good points about Distributed 
systems.  I agree with the idea of a user interface to allow users to 
write distributed applications.  What I think Marty was saying was a set of 
routines that users can use that may or may not send data off to another
system to be processed.  This should all happen with out the user knowing
it is happening and knowing which machine it is going to. 
There are numerous other options that can take this approach.  Virtually
any application you are currently using could be written to take 
advantage of this user interface.  Ideally, you would want to design
the distributed interface so that existing applications could be linked
with a different library and not know the difference.
 
 
This is not trivial especially in a heterogeneous environment.
But, with this type of interface and the underlying support you should be
able to achieve some sense of load balancing and fault tolerance.
It would not be a "real" distributed system, but I think for most
general cases it would be an acceptable solution.
 
I just wish I had time to work on it :-).
 
One problem I seem to have with some of my colleagues and other managers
is how to let them "see the light".  They are of the opinion if you need
to have several applications share information an the current machine
won't handle the load, you buy a bigger computer.  Also They think
that distributed processing is not applicable to "their" applications.
 
I have been trying to educate them on the advantages of distributed
processing/systems but it is slow going.  Anybody have any ideas on
how to "enlighten" them?
 
 
 
-----------------
 
Bill Stoltz
Texas Instruments
Process Automation Center
P.O. Box 655012, M/S 3635
Dallas, TX 75243
 
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