Distributed Object Systems (was Re: VNC Server)

Marcel Weiher marcel at metaobject.com
Wed Apr 19 08:44:06 UTC 2000


> From: "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu>

> However, there's a strong intuition that there is an easy  
generalization
> here: just make remote object references behave like local ones.  The 
> problem is, unfortunately, that it doesn't work when you look at the 
> next level of details.  Well, *I* think it doesn't work, and others 
> disagree.  :)

I think the way it would/could/does work is to make both local  
messaging and remote messaging special cases of "generic messaging".   
In fact, one could very well argue that current Smalltalk messaging  
*is* just a specialization of "generic messaging", and I think that  
this might be where the people who claim that "it's all really the  
same" might be coming from.

Practically, I think it might be useful to build a remote messaging  
system based on the assumption that it is the same and then see what  
doesn't quite fit.  After that, (re-)introduce generic messaging to  
cover the commonalities and handle the differences by specializing.

> By the way, the paper that someone recommended at Sun is very good: 
>
> 	 
http://www.sun.com/research/technical-reports/1994/abstract-29.html

I have only skimmed it, but the fact that there are differences  
shouldn't be used as an excuse to mask the similarities and introduce  
gratuitous/unecessary differences/complications.

Marcel





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