OAI — concepts for open systems cooperation

Abstract

The advent of wide-spread optical fibre networks using broadband communication techniques together with the extension of ISO activities to Open Distributed Processing will generate and support innovative applications based on broadband-ISDN and wide-area networks. In such open systems distribution will be the consequence of the geographical and organisational situation rather than the result of a dedicated design decision, and the system will be assembled from existing entities rather than being built from scratch. Enterprise networks, inter-organisational networks and very large distributed systems are examples of such systems where cooperation between autonomous and heterogeneous components must be achieved.

OAI (Open Application and Interaction Systems), the main research project of GMD FOKUS Berlin, is developing concepts for such cooperating open systems, including adequate modelling techniques and design principles. This paper first describes the abstractions of the environment from which dedicated concepts and structures are derived. These concepts and structures are then elaborated in a first approach towards a general OAI architecture. Finally, it is demonstrated how this architecture together with related principles is being adopted in some short- to medium-term projects which are aiming at more detailed concepts and prototype implementations.