jberets@bbn.com (Jim Berets) (05/18/89)
Cronus is a distributed computing environment currently under development at BBN Systems and Technologies. Its major goal is to provide a coherent and integrated environment in which distributed applications can easily be built. Significant Cronus features include: + operation in a heterogeneous environment, including underlying hardware architectures, programming languages and environments, and network technology; + interoperability and coexistance with existing software bases, non-distributed operating systems (such as UNIX, VMS, and Genera), and applications; + a complete environment in which to develop integrated distributed applications; + delivery of the application development environment to developers in a way that is easy to use. Cronus has been designed as a base for the development of large-scale distributed heterogeneous applications. Although internally the system is object-oriented, this aspect of Cronus is largely hidden from application developers. Most of the details of implementing distributed applications are provided by a combination of code automatically generated from an interface specification (including an RPC interface for clients), library routines, and system components. %A James C. Berets %A Ronald A. Mucci %A Richard E. Schantz %T Cronus: A Testbed for Developing Distributed Systems %B 1985 IEEE Military Communications Conference %I IEEE Communications Society %P 409-417 %D October 1985 %X This paper provides an overview of the Cronus system architecture, and describes a distributed application developed with the Cronus application development tools. %A Richard E. Schantz %A Robert H. Thomas %A Girome Bono %T The Architecture of the Cronus Distributed Operating System %B Proceedings of the 6th Int'l Conference in Distributed Computing Systems %I IEEE Computer Society %P 250-259 %D May 1986 %X This paper provides an overview of Cronus goals and architecture. %A Robert F. Gurwitz %A Michael A. Dean %A Richard E. Schantz %T Programming Support in the Cronus Distributed Operating System %B Proceedings of the 6th Int'l Conference in Distributed Computing Systems %I IEEE Computer Society %P 486-493 %D May 1986 %X This paper describes an early version of the software development tools that Cronus provides for building distributed applications. %A Michael A. Dean %A Richard M. Sands %A Richard E. Schantz %T Canonical Data Representation in the Cronus Distributed Operating System %B Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM '87 %I IEEE Computer Society %P 814-819 %D March 1987 %X This paper describes the method used in Cronus to transfer data between machines of different architectures. %A Thomas A. Casey, Jr. %A Stephen T. Vinter %A D.G. Weber %A Rammohan Varadarajan %A David Rosenthal %T A Secure Distributed Operating System %B Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy %I IEEE Computer Society %P 27-38 %D April 1988 %X This paper describes work conducted on a project designing a secure distributed operating system that is based on Cronus. %A Stephen T. Vinter %T Extended Discretionary Access Controls %B Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy %I IEEE Computer Society %P 39-49 %D April 1988 %X This paper describes the design of a discretionary access control mechanism that is an extension of the facility used in Cronus. %A Paul A. Bicknell %T Software Development and Configuration Management in the Cronus Distributed Operating System %B Proc. Conference on Software Maintenance-1988 %D October 1988 %X This paper describes the configuration management mechanisms used inside the Cronus project to generate and maintain Cronus releases. %A James C. Berets %A Richard M. Sands %T Introduction to Cronus %R Technical Report 6986 %I BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation %D January 1989 %X This report gives a relatively detailed overview of Cronus facilities. %A Stephen T. Vinter %A Nilkanth Phadnis %A Richard Floyd %T Distributed Query Processing in Cronus %B Proceedings of the 8th Int'l Conference in Distributed Computing Systems %D to be published in June 1989 %X This paper describes extensions to the Cronus object storage facilities that support distributed query processing. %A Stephen T. Vinter %T Integrated Distributed Computing Using Heterogeneous Systems %J SIGNAL %I Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association %D to be published in June 1989 %A Edward F. Walker %A Paul Neves %T Asynchronous Remote Operation Execution in Object Oriented Distributed Systems %B submitted for publication