Preparing Mozart 1.4.0

[Boriss Mejias]

Peter Van Roy wrote:
> Raphael Collet wrote:
>> Dear Bob,
>>
>> In short, the major change is the distribution layer.  It has been 
>> reimplemented completely on top of the DSS (Distribution SubSystem) 
>> library.  The DSS abstracts and generalizes the former distribution 
>> layer, and is no longer Mozart-specific.  It is mainly the work of 
>> Erik Klintskog (SICS, Sweden).
> Raphael is being too modest here.  His contributions are at least as 
> important as Erik's.
> 
> Erik Klintskog's Ph.D. dissertation: "Generic Distribution Support for 
> Programming Systems", KTH, June 2005, 
> http://www.sics.se/~erik/PAPERS/phd_final.pdf
> 
> Raphael Collet's Ph.D. dissertation: "The Limits of Network Transparency 
> in a Distributed Programming Language", UCL, Dec. 2007, 
> http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/raphthesis.pdf
> 
> I want to emphasize that the DSS can be used independently of Mozart: 
> it's a C++ library that is called by the Mozart emulator, but it can 
> also be used in any C++ program to provide similar distribution abilities.

Another clarification here. A while ago, when we decided that mozdss should go 
as a branch in the official Mozart repository, we discussed with Erik and Raph 
about the support to C++. We decided that it would be unnecessary work, so we 
dropped it. From that point, DSS evolved mainly thinking in terms of Mozart, 
and the support for C++ became obsolete.

One of the big changes done in the implementation was the transition from 
"Mediator + Abstract Entity" to only an Abstract interface on DSS, with its 
implementation in the Glue layer of Mozart. This implementation is more 
efficient, but it request more work on the Glue layer.

DSS remains as a language independent middleware for distribution in its 
design, but it would require non-negligible work to implement a Glue to be 
used with C++.

cheers
Boriss

> 
> Peter
> 
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