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From: guendel@exunido.uucp (Andreas Guendel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Access Protection in Distributed Smalltalk
Summary: Summary of your responses
Message-ID: <1115@laura.UUCP>
Date: 20 Feb 89 15:02:34 GMT
References: <996@laura.UUCP>
Sender: root@laura.UUCP
Reply-To: guendel@exunido.UUCP (Andreas Guendel)
Organization: University of Dortmund, W-Germany
Lines: 60

The relative small number of responses to my questions on access protection
in distributed Smalltalk-Systems has shown that this is not a favorite
subject in the Smalltalk-community (therby supporting Bennett's opinion).
But I think there has been enough to justify a small summary, mostly based
on the opinions of David Keppel, Donald Mead and Mario Wolczko (thanks):

> -  Do you think that Smalltalk will envetually build a basis for
>    a distributed multi-user commercial application?

Yes, if better features for distribution and access control are provided.
Important: availability and standardisation of these features.

> -  Do you think that this user may have different capabilities
>    to access each other's objects?

Yes, because it is too easy in Smalltalk to shoot oneself in the foot, other
     feed have to be protected.
Yes, because the desired applications demand levels of access protection.

> -  Do you think that access protection should be integrated into
>    a distributed Smalltalk System or into the applications?

Yes, the only secure way to provide access protection.
Yes, extra complexity of distr. applications hidden as mutch as possible.

> -  ... Any other related questions.

Problem: Garbage collection in systems with access protection.
Hint:    Several other distr. o.o. languages (Emerald, Clouds, Trellis/Owl).

Additionally there have been two questions in a number of responses:

1. Literature on (access protection in) distributed Smalltalk-Systems?

Distributed Smalltalk:

OOPSLA'86: Decouchant  -> Integration into the virtual machine
OOPSLA'87: Bennett, McCullough -> 2 articles about integration into the image

Access Protection in ...:

I do not know any published article, but

Mario Wolczko has offered a report on this subject to me, please contact him
(mario@ux.cs.man.ac.uk) to ask for it. I think he will send a copy to you.

I can send a copy of my report "Access Protection in a Distributed Smalltalk-
System" to you. It presents a short description of remote message-sending and
has its focus on control mechanisms for incomming messages and the subsequent
calculations triggered by them.

2. Available distributed Smalltalk-Systems?

A really difficult question: Smalltalk-80 is a quite complex system and it is
not likely to develop one's own version. My prototypical system is based on
the ParcPlace-Systems implementation and therefore I can not pass it to the
community (read the report and make your own extensions). If anybody has a
public-domain distributed Smalltalk please POST.

To get a better discussion, please send all responses directly to the net.