COMMUNICATIONS FOR DISTRIBUTED AND CONCURRENT PROCESSING ON MICROCOMPUTERS

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS PROJECT IS TO DEVELOP THE DESIGN AND APILOT IMPLEMENTATION OF TWO COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGES WHICH WILL SUPPORT DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING FROM A MICROCOMPUTER WORKSTATION BASE. PARTICLULAR EMPHASIS IS GIVEN TO THE PROBLEM OF DIAL-UP ACCESS TO COMMUNICATION NETWORKS IN THE CONTEXT OF DISTRIBUTED DATA BASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS. THE FIRST PACKAGE ADDRESSES THE PROBLEM OF SIMULTANEOUSLY RUNNING AN APPLICATION, SUCH AS A SPREAD SHEET, WHILE COMMUNICATING WITH A REMOTE COMPUTER. THIS PRODUCT WILL MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO AVOID THE CURRENT SEQUENTIAL PROCEDURES FOR HANDLING TWO APPLICATIONS SUCH AS THESE. THE SECOND COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGE ADDRESSES THE DESIGN OF A SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE WHICH WILL SUPPORT MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS BETWEEN A MICROCOMPUTER SYSTEM AND A NUMBER OF REMOTE COMPUTERS. WE HAVE IDENTIFIED A SPECIFIC APPLICATION, A DISTRIBUTED DATA BASE, TO WHICH WE PROPOSE TOAPPLY THE SYSTEM WE DESIGN. THESE TWO PRODUCTS WILL BE DESIGNED AND TESTED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE DISTRIBUTED ACCESS VIEW INTEGRATED DATA BASE (DAVID) SYSTEM CURRENTLY BEING DEVELOPED WITHIN NASA. A PROTOTYPE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM INVOLVING A MICROCOMPUTER AND SEVERAL MINICOMPUTERS EXECUTING DATA BASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS WITH RELATED BUT DIFFERENT SCHENA WILL BEUSED TO STUDY THE UTILITY OF OUR APPROACH.