C nodes

[Ulf Wiger]

On Sat, 3 Mar 2001, Raimo Niskanen wrote:

>I guess so, but there is quite some things that a node must do to be a
>"real" erlang node. For a short list right out of the head: rpc, file,
>global, global_group, dist_ac, application, application_controller.
>There are probably a lot more.

Rpc? That would probably not be required. You would only want to
use rpc:call(M, F, A) if you know exactly what module is loaded
on the other node - most likely that it is the very same module 
that is loaded in yours.

File? Yes, perhaps.

Global? global_group? Naah. I think these two need to be rethought
anyway. After that, it might not be too impossible to include a 
C node in the global name space.

Dist_ac? Again, you would only use that if you think you can start
applications on the other node, and these are in fact the Erlang
applications that you know and love.

I think what is really needed is a framework for specifying
distributed protocols and handling unsupported services. We may want
to have this between Erlang nodes as well. In most applications so
far, the networks of Erlang nodes have been pretty homogeneous, often
with the very same boot script executing on all nodes. I think many
will want to depart from that in the future.

This is also good from another perspective: it forces us to be more
formal about the traffic between nodes, and makes it easier to
maintain compatibility across versions, as well as reason about
real-time and robustness characteristics.

/Uffe
-- 
Ulf Wiger                                    tfn: +46  8 719 81 95
Senior System Architect                      mob: +46 70 519 81 95
Strategic Product & System Management    ATM Multiservice Networks
Data Backbone & Optical Services Division      Ericsson Telecom AB