Subject: URN related work: Globe

From: Gerco Ballintijn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:30:19 +0200

Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> So, we're pretty much done.  If anyone is aware of URN projects
> or implementation work being done, please feel free to mention
> them on this list.
>

In the category related work, I would like to mention our research.

The Globe [1,2] project has as a goal the creation of a framework to
facilitate the building of wide-area (worldwide) distributed applications.
The framework is object-based: resources and services are modeled as
distributed objects. User processes bind to these objects and perform
methods invocations to use them. The focus of the research is on
scalability, both in the number of objects supported (10^12) and
their geographical location. One focus is on building object specific
replication schemes. My research with-in Globe deals with *Naming*
and *Locating* objects in the distributed system (Internet). The
name and location service play an important part in the binding
process.

Naming in Globe is done using a two-level naming scheme. First human
friendly object names (for example ASCII strings) are translated via a
normal name service (like DNS) to an object identifier. Then this object
identifier is given to the location service, which will return a set
of contact addresses. A contact address describes *where* and *how*
the user process can contact the object. A contact address is basically
a network address + protocol identifier.

The main focus of my research so far is on building a wide-area location
service [3]. We use a distributed search tree to represent a hierarchical
partitioning of the underlying network. This approach is similar to
work done in the telecomm world. We think that our naming and location
problems are sufficiently similar that our techniques can be used to
perform (the more general) URN resolution (substitute human friendly
name with URN and contact address with URL). The status of the work is
that most parts of the location service are designed and implemented
in a (RAD) prototype. Currently we are looking at ways to validate our
ideas proposed to solve the (naming and) location problems.

I'd be happy to answer further questions concerning Globe and its use
of naming and location services.

                                Gerco.

[1]     URL: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~steen/globe/
[2]     M. van Steen, P. Homburg, and A.S. Tanenbaum.
        "Globe: A Wide-Area Distributed System."
        IEEE Concurrency, January-March, 1999, pp. 70-78.
[3]     M. van Steen, F.J. Hauck, P. Homburg, and A.S. Tanenbaum.
        "Locating Objects in Wide-Area Systems."
        IEEE Communications Magazine, January 1998, pp. 104-109.

----------------------------------v------------------------------------
G.C. Ballintijn                   |      Oh, Fortuna
mailto:[email-masked]             |      Velut luna
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~gerco/       |      Statu variabilis.....