Open distributed processing (panel)

The computer industry is facing a software crisis. To remain competitive, organizations need to continually improve the computer solutions they use to run the enterprise. However, constructing and maintaining enterprise wide application systems running in a heterogeneous distributed environment is too expensive and time consuming, resulting in a large backlog of unfulfilled needs. One of the most promising approaches to resolving this software crisis is the idea of constructing software systems by interconnecting software component products developed by a wide variety of commercial software vendors and in-house developers. This approach allows customers to better leverage the work of others, reducing development costs. It offers maximum freedom of choice to the customer, enabling more flexible and configurable enterprise solutions. It encourages competition among software developers to produce innovative components that maximize the value to customers. It enables the rapid evolution of software systems to meet fast changing business requirements. For this component-based approach to be successful, several requirements must be satisfied. It must be possible to interconnect components developed independently, using different programming languages, running on different kinds of machines in a distributed environment. It must be possible to replace individual components, again where the new component might be implemented by a different developer, using a different programming language, running on a different machine, possibly of a different kind than the original component. It must be possible to introduce or replace existing components with new components that provide extended capabilities without breaking existing software. Adding or replacing components must be possible without stopping the system. It should be possible to validate component interconnections for compatibility based on component attributes. Components should be isolated from each other so that software errors can be confined and tracked to a particular component. It must be possible to incorporate existing " legacy " applications with minimal or no modification. These capabilities should apply not just to traditional application programs, but also to smaller functional units, such as a file selection dialog, and even to basic system components, such as file systems and virtual memory managers. At a higher level, it must be possible to interconnect data, not just programs. For example, it must be possible to connect a specific invoice with a specific customer record. It must be easy for system administrators and users to make interconnections and reconfigure components. For example, it should be possible to move a collection of data to a different …