Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!donald!hasko
From: hasko@heeg.de (Hasko Heinecke)
Subject: Re: HP Distributed Smalltalk?
Message-ID: <CyqyA0.4J8@heeg.de>
Organization: Georg Heeg Objektorientierte Systeme, Dortmund, FRG
References: <jnedzelCyGL6E.KnG@netcom.com> <bobblumCypD1F.6p6@netcom.com> <jnedzelCypJvK.EMB@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 14:15:35 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <jnedzelCypJvK.EMB@netcom.com> jnedzel@netcom.com (Gared Nedzel) writes:
>In article <bobblumCypD1F.6p6@netcom.com> bobblum@netcom.com (Bob Blum) writes:
>>: Has anyone used HP Distributed Smalltalk?  If so, what do thing about it?
>>: Is it robust? What are its drawbacks?
>>
>>The smalltalk is Parc Place's Visual Works.  HP Distributed Smalltalk is
>>a "wrapper" around VW to allow distributing the objects in a network.
>
>I know that -- I have the marketing drivel and will be getting an eval copy
>before long.  My question is, has anyone used it?  Does it work?  What are
>the advantages/disadvantages?  Are there any gotchas?  

Correct me if I'm wrong: As far as I know, HP DST does not have a concept
of distributed exception handling. It's not easily possible to propagate an
exception backward through the calling chain to a remote caller. Behind this
is the lack of distriuted processes. Processes can communicate though the
network - fine. Still, it's not possible to distribute the processes, stack
frames etc. themselves.

However, HP's not the one to blame, because CORBA, i.e. OMG, does not
specify distributed exception handling, anyway. I can tell you, it's
something you're going to ask for when you're doing client-server or
distributed computing!

Hasko

-- 
+-------------------------------------------------------+
| Hasko Heinecke speaking for myself only               |
| I _never_ mean what I say - and nobody else does...   |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
