Construction and Management of Distributed Open Systems
COMANDOS-2 - 2071
Keywords distributed systems, open systems, object-oriented environments, ODP, applications software development environments
Start Date: 01-MAR-89 / Duration: 48 months
[ contact / participants ]
Objectives and Approach
The development of application software is currently a labour- and cost-intensive task, especially for distributed applications. The overall objective of COMANDOS has been to help facilitate the construction of large-scale, multivendor, distributed open systems by providing an integrated applications support environment for programming and using distributed applications that can manipulate long-lived data. The COMANDOS project was targeted at loosely coupled distributed systems of workstations, servers and processor pools, using internets based primarily on LANs.
To construct such a platform requires the integration of three key aspects: operating systems, data management and programming languages. An object-oriented approach for the operating system support has been adopted, which can be exploited by data management systems and integrated with programming language environments. Intrinsic components of the platform are administrative tools to manage the operation of an installed system, and user-interface generation tools to aid the development of interactive applications.
Progress and Results
This project built on COMANDOS-1 (project 834), which was mainly dedicated to the exploratory prototyping of the platform. A number of significant achievements were demonstrated in project 834, and based on these results a further consolidation and integration phase has allowed the development of an integrated prototype of the platform (Release-1) at the end of the first year of COMANDOS-2. Following a period of evaluation and revision, a full pre-industrial prototype of the platform (Release-2) has been provided. In parallel, Release-1 was used as an experimental basis for the construction of extended facilities (mainly a distributed directory service and on-line management facilities) and for the development of a real-world application in the office area. The fourth year of the project was mainly dedicated to consolidating and enhancing the pre-industrial prototype, including the integration of various facilities already developed on top of Release-1.
Exploitation
The industrial partners involved in the project are considering COMANDOS as a platform for the European IT industry to develop easily portable distributed applications while allowing the coexistence of old-style (Unix-oriented) applications. The results of the COMANDOS project will provide an increased level of harmonisation and consistency within the European market. Introducing the COMANDOS platform for the development of distributed applications leads to a significant increase in productivity and competitiveness. This is especially valuable because the wide range of products produced by the various industrial companies lack common functions as well as homogeneity at the basic operating system level. Therefore the results of the COMANDOS project will strongly influence the future development of software products in a number of market segments.
The current ISO Open Distributed Processing (ODP) working group is currently considering a computational model for cooperative distributed processing. COMANDOS accommodated and provided inputs to these efforts. In particular, implementation experience was a valuable input to the standardisation process.
The three main European manufacturers involved in COMANDOS are also members of the Open Software Foundation (OSF) and the Object Management Group (OMG). The results and experience gained from COMANDOS enable them to influence future developments in these two international bodies.
CONTACT POINT
Mr Roland Balter
BULL SA
ZI Mayencin - Rue Vignate 2
F - 38610 GIERES
tel: + 33/ 76-544912
fax: + 33/ 76-547615
telex: 320245
Participants
BULL SA - F - C
INESC - P - P
TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN - IRL - P
SIEMENS-NIXDORF
INFORMATIONSSYSTEME AG (SNI) - D - P
CHORUS SYSTEMES - F - A
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE
CATALUÑA - E - A
UNIVERSITÄT STUTTGART - D - A
SERVICE ETUDES COMMUNICATIONS
POSTES TEL - F - A
IMAG-LGI - F - A
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW - UK - A
OSF - F - A
FRAUNHOFER-ITW - D - A
COMANDOS-2 - 2071, December 1993
please address enquiries to the ESPRIT Information Desk
html version of synopsis by Nick Cook
Michel RIVEILL
Laboratoire I3S
Polytech - Nice - Sophia
930 Route des Colles
BP 145
F-06903 Sophia Antipolis CEDEX
Email : riveill at unice.fr
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