cal@otter.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low) (10/20/89)
Having said some nice things about Isis in private, Ken Birman has persuaded me to say the same things about Isis in public. I won't say *exactly* the same things, but I will make some comments. I got Isis for installation at HPLabs here in Bristol because I think it is the best distributed programming tool I have come across. In order to sell the idea to people doing research here (I work in a support role) I thought I would write an application which exploits Isis's strengths, which I could then use to justify using the tool for prototyping research ideas etc. I decided to do a distributed wall planner, the sort of thing people use in offices to keep track of holidays, meetings, deadlines etc. I want it to have an X interface which looks just like a conventional wall planner, with the ability to scroll back and forward through time. This is the sort of thing Isis is superb for: a memory resident database, replicated for each user, with immediate visual notification of changes, consistent across all copies, fast screen updates (because each user has a local, memory resident copy of the database), built in tools for joining the group and logging its state, redundant copies not attached to a user, which can keep a copy of the database on several systems for fault tolerance. I wrote the database (a simple, time-ordered linked list of activities) and within about 3 hours of finishing the database I had it replicated, with a simple tty interface for adding entries and inspecting it. I hadn't written any Isis code previously. I don't know of any other tool which makes replicated data so easy to manage. Even at the level of doing RPC's, it is a lot easier to use than the RPC packages I have used (SUN RPC, Courier, Apollo NCS, Admiral). *** Eulogy ends **** All I have to do is the X interface (thud) (sound of brains falling out) Colin Low, HP Labs Bristol, UK. (cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com)