From: Dave Bakhash
Subject: Lisp Remote Procedure Call
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 21:33:09 +0000
Message-ID: <8a3667a0.0202281333.a327321@posting.google.com>

Hi,

I was recently reading about "Lisp Remote Procedure Call" on the Franz
website:

http://www.franz.com/products/connectivity_tools/

and read this:

--------

Lisp Remote Procedure Call
Provides Allegro CL developers an alternative to CORBA, allowing one
Lisp image to call functions and access data in a second Lisp image
anywhere on a network.

Facilitates splitting an application into distributed components 
Enables effective use of multi-processor architectures, where
distributed components may utilize several processors

--------

I just wanted to know...Has anyone used this?  How different is it
from Corba?  I checked out the online docs for it:

http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.1/doc/rpc.htm

but I couldn't get much of a sense of how easy it would be to have a
Lisp-based client/server system.  The hardest part of reading this doc
was trying to figure out how remote objects (references) are handled.

Has anyone ever used this?

For those who have used it...does it seem like something that's hard
to implement in CL?  Can you decide what functions are "published" to
remote Lisps?

thanks,
dave

From: Marco Antoniotti
Subject: Re: Lisp Remote Procedure Call
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 22:17:31 +0000
Message-ID: <y6cadtt1cas.fsf@octagon.mrl.nyu.edu>

·····@alum.mit.edu (Dave Bakhash) writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I was recently reading about "Lisp Remote Procedure Call" on the Franz
> website:
> 
> http://www.franz.com/products/connectivity_tools/
> 
> and read this:
> 
> --------
> 
> Lisp Remote Procedure Call
> Provides Allegro CL developers an alternative to CORBA, allowing one
> Lisp image to call functions and access data in a second Lisp image
> anywhere on a network.
> 
> Facilitates splitting an application into distributed components 
> Enables effective use of multi-processor architectures, where
> distributed components may utilize several processors
> 
> --------
> 
> I just wanted to know...Has anyone used this?  How different is it
> from Corba?  I checked out the online docs for it:
> 
> http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/6.1/doc/rpc.htm
> 
> but I couldn't get much of a sense of how easy it would be to have a
> Lisp-based client/server system.  The hardest part of reading this doc
> was trying to figure out how remote objects (references) are handled.
> 
> Has anyone ever used this?
> 
> For those who have used it...does it seem like something that's hard
> to implement in CL?  Can you decide what functions are "published" to
> remote Lisps?


CMUCL has a similar functionality.  Check out the "WIRE" package.

It does not seem that difficult to use. But, alas, it is unportable.

Cheers

-- 
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group        tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor                 fax  +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA                 http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
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                           Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.