Essential Links for DIST-OBJ Readers

Herein lies a pile of technology links as swiped from the dist-obj mailing list. If you're interested in distributed objects, visit these links to see what's going on, then read dist-obj to see what it all means.

These are primary technology links, pointing to people and places who are developing or implementing specific pieces of technology. There are no reviews, summaries, or comparisons here.

Note: Site reviews are not my opinions; they're what the submitter thought. No affiliation with commercial site exists.

See the change log at the bottom for only the newest stuff.

The Links

Software to Play With
- The Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE) and Real-time CORBA with TAO (The ACE ORB)
  "The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) is an object-oriented (OO) framework that
  implements many core design patterns for concurrent communication software." Versions in C++ and Java.

Ambits (Mobile Computational Ambients) by Luca Cardelli
Bast by Benoīt Garbinato
A Freeware Framework for Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computing
* only available for VisualWorks 2.5, the Smalltalk environment from ParcPlace-Digitalk, on Sun SPARC workstations running Solaris 2.x.
A Java version is under consideration.
DASCo Project
"Distributed applications development is complex." Research on splitting the problems into independant domains.
The Distributed Coalition
iBus (The Intranet Software Bus)
Caltech Infospheres Project
Gemstone/J (commercial)
fully integrated Java OODB
MONDO
A general architecture for encoding, modeling, and processing information.
TBone by Tilo Christ
"The T-Bone is an easy-to-use system that allows you to connect arbitrary JavaBeans™ which reside on different machines."
WebFramework by Mojave
webMethods - Automate the Web (commercial)
"Really cool stuff. Worth spending 10 minutes just looking around their site, including the tech paper at http://www.webmethods.com/technology/Automating.html"

Active Networks

Switchware at University of Pennsylvania

PLAN (Programming Language for Active Networks) (includes Java software and a demo)

Active network research in the SDS group at the MIT Lab for Computer Science ("Tennenhouse's group")

ANEP (Active Network Encapsulation Protocol)
ants, an active networking toolkit -- Java software available!

Agents
- Open Agent Architecture (OAA)
  "A framework for integrating a community of heterogeneous software agents in a distributed environment." Paul Benninghoff says "the emphasis of OAA is not on building robust, scalable, efficient distributed systems -- the main point is to provide a functional, extensible environment for agent research, particularly research on agent communication languages and various agent coordination semantics. ... To that end the system functions quiet well."
- Mobile Agent Facility Spec from The Open Group, IBM, and a bunch of others
  "This specification focuses on interoperability between different agent systems (e.g., Odyssey, Aglets, and MOA). It creates a uniform means for an agent to travel from one system to another, for a system operator to manage agents of different systems, and for clients to locate agents."
- Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) 97 spec
  Another spec for agent interaction. The spec itself is modularized. Version 1.0 is complete, and currently in field trials.
- Agent Economies
  - A technology survey by Nelson Minar
  - "Markets and Computation: Agorics Open Systems," a really fun paper that's visionary about using
    economic principles to manage complex distributed object systems, if not terribly practical for implementation.
  - "Market-oriented Programming: Some Early Lessons," (postscript) a good read, it has some practical advice.

Object Frameworks

Business objects at IBM (Object Magazine)
JavaScript beans (Object Magazine)
Active Bean Space by Dmitri Kondratiev
Metadata

Document Objects

W3C's Document Object Model (DOM)

Event Modelling
- An Events Bibliography by Adam Rifkin
  References to existing event models.

UML
- UXF - A UML eXchange Format in XML
- CDIF Home Page - Working to standardize CASE tool interoperability
- UCI Links to UML Resources - Lots of good links, including definitions and tools

The specs at W3C
An Introduction to XML
Xapi-J, A Standardized XML API in Java
XML Links by Adam Rifkin
The latest in XML - lifted shamelessly from Adam Rifkins message to the mailing list
Info at James K. Tauber's Site
The XML Files
IBM's parser for Java
Coins by Bill la Forge
Serializing JavaBeans as XML, representnig XML elements as JavaBeans.

Middleware
- Programming the Middleware Machine with Finesse
  "This position statement explores the possibility of using a higher level language for programming the middleware. Such a language could provide many features, including: ... abstraction over component interaction [and] aggregation ... optimisation of communication ..."

Sun's Own Stuff

Orthogonal persistence for Java:

The Forest Project is the research
PJama is the system

InfoBus
JavaSpaces
JavaTM Shared Data Toolkit (JSDT)

IBM's Goodies
- Aglets
- Shared Data Objects
- JKQML - KQML for Java
  KQML is "Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language," a standardized language for agent communication.
- Resource Description Framework (RDF) for XML
- TSpaces

DIST-OBJ Members

Bigwigs:

Mere mortals:

Change Log

10 May 1998
- Additions
  - The Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE) and Real-time CORBA with TAO (The ACE ORB)
    "The ADAPTIVE Communication Environment (ACE) is an object-oriented (OO) framework that
    implements many core design patterns for concurrent communication software." Versions in C++ and Java.
  - DASCo Project
    "Distributed applications development is complex." Research on splitting the problems into independant domains.
  - New "Event Modelling" section
    - An Events Bibliography by Adam Rifkin
      References to existing event models.
  - XML
    - Info at James K. Tauber's Site
    - The latest in XML - lifted shamelessly from Adam Rifkins message to the mailing list
    - Info at James K. Tauber's Site
    - The XML Files
    - IBM's parser for Java
    - Coins by Bill la Forge
      Serializing JavaBeans as XML, representnig XML elements as JavaBeans.
  - New UML section
    - UXF - A UML eXchange Format in XML
    - CDIF Home Page - Working to standardize CASE tool interoperability
    - UCI Links to UML Resources - Lots of good links, including definitions and tools
  - Agents
    - Open Agent Architecture (OAA)
      A framework for integrating a community of heterogeneous software agents in a distributed environment. Paul Benninghoff says "the emphasis of OAA is not on building robust, scalable, efficient distributed systems -- the main point is to provide a functional, extensible environment for agent research, particularly research on agent communication languages and various agent coordination semantics. ... To that end the system functions quiet well."
    - Mobile Agent Facility Spec from The Open Group, IBM, and a bunch of others
      "This specification focuses on interoperability between different agent systems (e.g., Odyssey, Aglets, and MOA). It creates a uniform means for an agent to travel from one system to another, for a system operator to manage agents of different systems, and for clients to locate agents."
    - Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) 97 spec
      Another spec for agent interaction. The spec itself is modularized. Version 1.0 is complete, and currently in field trials.
  - Middleware
    - Programming the Middleware Machine with Finesse
      "This position statement explores the possibility of using a higher level language for programming the middleware. Such a language could provide many features, including: ... abstraction over component interaction [and] aggregation ... optimisation of communication ..."
  - IBM's Goodies
    - Aglets
    - Shared Data Objects
    - JKQML - KQML for Java
      KQML is "Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language," a standardized language for agent communication.
    - Resource Description Framework (RDF) for XML
    - TSpaces
- Changes
  - Ambits has moved.
  - Sun's Own Stuff
    - Sun's JavaSpaces is now a "product," and has moved.
    - Sun's JSDI is now called JSDT, and has moved.

5 December 1997

Additions

TBone by Tilo Christ
"The T-Bone is an easy-to-use system that allows you to connect arbitrary JavaBeans™ which reside on different machines."
Mark Baker
Rich Burridge

Changes

BamBam is no longer available