Methods and apparatus for making and using distributed applications.

摘要

A client-server system for which applications programmers may easily write services and in which a relationship between a server and a service may be changed without halting the server. Both client and server have access to copies of code for the service. The code has two parts: a caller portion which requests a service and a callee portion which executes the service. State variables in the client process and the server process determine which portion of the code is executed. This mechanism permits a server to forward execution of the service to another server. The code for the service is written using a template which relieves the applications programmer of the need to write specialized code. The server provides the client with a server namespace which is distinct from the server's system namespace. The client can locate a service by means of a service pathname in the system namespace. The server further provides the client with namespace manipulation services which permit the client to add services to and remove services from a server and otherwise to manipulate the server namespace without halting the server. <IMAGE>