Towards a new distributed programming environment (CORDS).

The main objective of the proposed research described here is to create a prototype environment for developing and managing distributed applications. Its specific focuses are: building extensions to third-generation languages to exploit the process model; developing a new high-level language based on the process model; designing new techniques for recovery and network transport abstractions; network management techniques for distributed applications; modelling and analysis of distributed systems; integration of transaction, database and directory services to support distributed applications; distributed debugging; and visualization of distributed applications. The environment is to be built upon existing platforms, such as X-windows, Motif, Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (OSF/DCE), ISO Open Systems Interconnect (ISO/OSI), Systems Application Architecture (SAA). This collaborative research brings together experts in different areas of computer science and the technologies and tools developed will be experimentally validated through the construction of distributed applications operating across the member sites.