john@computing.lancaster.ac.uk (John R. Nicol) (02/02/88)
Project: COSMOS
E-mail Address: cosmos@comp.lancs.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 524 65201 Ext 4145, 4146
Contact:
John Nicol
(The COSMOS Research Group)
Department of Computing
University of Lancaster
Bailrigg
Lancaster, LA1 4YR,
UNITED KINGDOM
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THE COSMOS PROJECT
Two observations provided the stimuli for the current
work of the distributed operating system research group.
Firstly, operating systems tend to provide a very poor
quality of service. The user is often presented with a low
level interface which is awkward to use and which provides
little to ease the burden of the programmer.
Secondly, most current generation operating systems
were designed before the advent of distributed computing.
Consequently, they provide little or no support for local
area networking.
It became clear to us that a new breed of operating
system would be required. We, therefore, started to look at
the design of an operating system which:-
a) provides a more intelligent programming environment,
i.e. we are interested in systems which raise the level
of interaction with the user, which make intelligent
decisions on behalf of the user and which provides help
for the programmer throughout the development cycle of
a software project, and
b) handles local area networking gracefully, i.e. network-
ing should be an intrinsic part of the operation of the
system and not an additional service.
The project is very much cross-disciplinary, containing
elements of distributed computing, programming environments,
operating systems and databases.
The current strength of the COSMOS group is as
follows:-
3 academic staff
2 post-doctoral research fellows
1 research assistant, and
2 research students.
Recent Research Reports/Technical Papers:-
. S. Borthwick, J. R. Nicol, and G. S. Blair, "An Intel-
ligent, Window Based Interface to UNIX," Proceedings
EUUG Autumn Conference, pp. 225-241 (September 1987).
. G. S. Blair, J. R. Nicol, and C. K. Yip, "A Functional
Model of Distributed Computing," Internal Report CS-
DC-1-86, Department of Computing, University of Lancas-
ter, Lancaster, England, (1985).
. G. S. Blair, J. R. Nicol, and J. Walpole, "An Overview
of the Cosmos Distributed Programming Environment Pro-
ject," Internal Report CS-DC-4-87, Department of Com-
puting, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England,
(1987).
. J. R. Nicol, G. S. Blair, and W. D. Shepherd, "A
Tailored Kernel Design for a Distributed Operating Sys-
tem," Internal Report CS-DC-3-86, Department of Comput-
ing, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England,
(1985).
. G. S. Blair, J. A. Mariani, and J. R. Nicol, "COSMOS -
A Nucleus for a Program Support Environment," Internal
Report CS-SE-1-86, Department of Computing, University
of Lancaster, Lancaster, England, (1986).
. G. S. Blair, J. A. Mariani, J. R. Nicol, and W. D.
Shepherd, "A Knowledge Based Operating System," The
Computer Journal Vol. 30(3) pp. 193-200 (June 1987).
. J. R. Nicol, G. S. Blair, W. D. Shepherd, and J. Wal-
pole, "An Approach to Multiple Copy Update Based on
Immutability," Proceedings of the IFIP Conference on
Distributed Processing, (October 1987).
. G. S. Blair, R. J. Lea, J. A. Mariani, J. R. Nicol, and
C. W. Wylie, "Total System Design in IPSEs," Software
Engineering Environments (edited by I. Sommerville),
pp. 85-103 Peter Peregrinus, (1986).
. J. R. Nicol, G. S. Blair, and J. Walpole, "Operating
System Design: Towards a Holistic Approach?," Operating
Systems Review Vol. 21(1) pp. 11-19 (January 1987).
. J. R. Nicol, "Operating System Design for Distributed
Programming Environments," Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Lancaster, (October 1986).
. J. Walpole, G. S. Blair, J. Malik, and J. R. Nicol,
"Maintaining Consistency in Distributed Software
Engineering Environments," Submitted to the 8th Inter-
national Conference on Distributed Computing Systems,
(November 1987).
. J. Walpole, G. S. Blair, and J. R. Nicol, "Maintaining
Consistency in Distributed Software Engineering
Environments," Internal Report, University of Lancas-
ter, Lancaster, England, (November 1987).
. J. Walpole, G. S. Blair, D. Hutchison, and J. R. Nicol,
"Transaction Mechanisms for Distributed Programming
Environments," Software Engineering Journal (Special
Issue on Distributed Computing) Vol. 2(5) pp. 169-177
(September 1987).
. J. Walpole, "Distributed Operating System Support for
IPSEs," Alvey Eclipse project working document
ADN/WP/DH/10, (October 1986).
. J. Walpole, "An Overview of the Sun Network File Sys-
tem," Alvey Eclipse project working document
ADN/WP/DH/7, (1985). DC-134
. D. Hutchison and J. Walpole, "Eclipse: A Distributed
Software Development Environment," Software Engineering
Journal Vol. 1(2) pp. 88-92 (March 1986).
. J. Walpole, "Maintaining Consistency in Distributed
IPSEs," Ph.D. Thesis, Submitted to the University of
Lancaster, (November 1987).
. G. S. Blair, "Distributed Operating System Structures
for Local Area Network Based Systems," Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Strathclyde, (December 1983).