Trader cooperation to enable object sharing among users of homogeneous distributed systems

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to build a trading service which allows users to access objects of remote distributed systems. This service is an extension to an original RHODOS trader which provides the maximum possible autonomy and flexibility to users yet at the same time allows them to share all accessible objects (resource, service) within a local distributed computer system. We demonstrated that concepts, such as attribute names, name domains, the operations of object export, import and withdrawal, are necessary to achieving object sharing among a number of users of independent homogeneous distributed computer systems which form together a large heterogeneous distributed system. We also show how location transparency can be achieved by the cooperation between traders based on attribute names and that the use of attributes has the potential to make resource sharing effective and efficient. * This work was partly supported by Australian Research Council under Grant A48831034 and the Deakin University Research Grant 0504054151. RHODOS March 15, 1993