Welcome to RemoteObjects wiki

RemoteObjects is an open source object server for Smalltalk.

Overview

RemoteObjects is a Smalltalk framework wich allows you to use objects from other Smalltalk images over the network. It has focus in efficiency by reducing overhead as much as possible. Several serializers can be used so interdialect interoperation will be possible. Different policies for attending incoming sockets and message dispatchal can be used so this should allow to make a very customized objects server.

Downloads

RemoteObjects Downloads

 

Future Steps

• Negotiation. Could be interesting that in server connection negotiations, the server could  offer several serializers as options to give to a client priorized by performance, then compatibility. As a result you can have automatically Dolphins talking in STB one to each other, and Squeak's talking in their own native serializer. But also automatically a squeak talking in OmniBase to a dolphin client (which seems to be the most performant dialec-neutral seralizer).
• Policies. Right now (february 2007) there are just a trivial connection policy and dispatchal policy. Some classes where created to suggest posibilities. Connection could be priorized for security reasons.
• UserSession. The established comunication should create a RemoteUserSession for each client. This will allow access control and more detailed exceptions to exist.
• Security. A dispatchal policy can be used to check remote user permissions on accessing, "reading" or "writting" the local objects by a user session. 
• Events. The system should support remote events. This will allow to have models "entirely remote" supporting remote async messages.
• DGC. Distributed Garbage Collection is a must. Collaboration between brokers sessions will allow that.
• Transactions. Remote transactions should be possible but that is a piece of challenge!
• Test. The system don't have unit test yet :(

History

RemoteObjects started as a refactoring of rST (RemoteSmalltalk) framework in february 2007 searching for a more efficient way to make a distributed environment. New design concepts to improve efficiency lead to some radical design changes over rST.

References