Opera has just released Opera Unite web server in the browser technology. Here is analysis by Mashable. Opera Unite is an enabling technology for tier agnostic Request Based Distributed Computing (RBDC). Key issues directly addressed by Opera Unite include: Drivers Build Distributed Applications Provide programmers with a unified programming model (i.e. not deal with...
Read More »

“STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming” has a great piece about the promise of a uniform model of computation based on arbitrary decomposition to the internet. On p32 they say: Part of the solution to “an Internet all the way down” has interesting conflicts with today’s hardware and we are curious to see just...
Read More »

In this post I argue that the current convergence of Desktop and / Web Apps (RIAs) suggests a convergence of Server and Clients and that this opens up some interesting possibilities. I have been following an interesting series of posts by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz on the web/desktop convergence trend (all four posts are worth reading!)....
Read More »

The purpose of this post is to illustrate the possibility for autonomic computing inherent in Request Based Distributed Computing (RBDC). This is how I summarised RBDC in a recent post: Request Based Distributed Computing is a small extension of the http protocol and notion of server, proxy and client. Rich Internet Applications, SOA architected...
Read More »

Tier-Agnostic requests are being used by the Wadi project in Java Server Farms. This Java-specific implementation lends support to the general applicability of Request Based Distributed Computing (RBDC) for client centric distributed computing. WADI is an acronym of ‘WADI Application Distribution Infrastructure’. WADI started life as a solution to the problems surrounding the distribution...
Read More »

Recently my attention has been directed to Microsoft’s Volta split-tier technology. Volta is addressing the same set of issues as Request Based Distributed Computing (RBDC). Key issues directly addressed by both Volta and RBDC include: Drivers Build Distributed Applications Provide programmers with a unified programming model (i.e. not deal with a separate programming model...
Read More »

The purpose of this post is to illustrate the behaviour of Request Based Distributed Computing (RBDC). This is how I summarised RBDC in a recent post: Request Based Distributed Computing is a small extension of the http protocol and notion of server, proxy and client. Rich Internet Applications, SOA architected applications and SETI@home type...
Read More »