Distributed Objects

Michael van der Gulik squeakml at gulik.co.nz
Tue Sep 6 08:28:47 UTC 2005


Michaël Piel wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We have planned to make a distributed computing project and we want to use distributed objects in Squeak.
> 
> I am currently making a synthesis and an evaluation of a few frameworks by comparing them with various criterions. We imperatively need high-level distributed objects, like "Distributed Smalltalk" for VisualWorks but in Squeak, and not just "sockets".
> 
> The main criterions are :
> - naming service
> - synchronous and asynchronous calls
> - remote message transport as copy and reference
> - distributed GC
> 
> Here is the list of the frameworks we are testing :
> - rST (Remote SmallTalk)
> - RMT (Remote Messaging Toolkit)
> - OperaORB-native
> - Ma Client Server
> 
> I would like to know if there are other frameworks which could satisfy these criterions.

Well, I'm working on "DPON" - 
http://www.squeaksource.com/@ZeKKSGMHwqNmGetd/GdsNKXub; or look for the 
"Distributed Persistent Object Network" project there. Email me for the 
  document describing how it all (should) work.

DPON is very unstable - I've just got remote invocation working; soon I 
plan to work on replicating objects using various interesting 
distributed algorithms, and moving classes around (the hard bit!).

It kind of has a naming service; it is completely untested and 
rudimentory at best.

It does synchronous and asynchronous calls - actually; the only form of 
message passing is asynchronous messages, and synchronous calls are 
implemented using these.

It does remote message transport using pass-by-copy, pass-by-reference, 
and a whole host of other methods (erm... when I write them, that is).

And distributed GC? Currently I'm going on the principle that it would 
crash long before that's a problem :-P.

Michael.




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