Novel gateway interconnects operating systems

OSE Systems describes OSE Gateway as a unique software solutionfor enabling connectivity at the operating system level.

OSEGateway provides a way for Windows, Solaris, Linux and VxWorks toparticipate in a heterogeneous distributed system.

This designincorporates the same message-passing technology used by the OSEoperating system and tightly integrates multiple operatingsystems into an efficient and fault-tolerant distributed system.A primary use of the OSE Gateway is in designs where an OSEcommunications device is managed by a Windows or Solarisworkstation.

Today, the interface between the device and itsmanagement console is implemented through software mechanismsfrom the enterprise world such as TCP sockets or CORBA.

Thesealternatives lack the tight integration of operating systemcomponents and do not inherently provide fault tolerance toindividual components.

The result is a complex mixture ofsoftware technologies that may not provide the required level ofperformance and reliability.

"OSE Gateway is the firstembedded systems product that enables heterogeneous distributedcomputing at the operating system level", said Bob Monkman,chief technical strategist for OSE Systems.

"Engineers nowhave the opportunity to exercise a high degree of creativity whendesigning high-reliability distributed systems forcommunications, networking and other distributedapplications".

OSE Gateway incorporates a library throughwhich a client application running on a non-OSE operating systemcommunicates with an OSE distributed system.

This library, whichis provided in source code for easy customisation, interfaceswith the OSE Gateway daemon running on that operating system.This Gateway daemon enables the client process to behave as anOSE process to the OSE distributed system and provides theability for that process to appear identical to those running onthe OSE operating system.

The OSE Link Handler complements theGateway by connecting all nodes of the distributed system andenabling OSE's built-in high-level supervisor across thesame nodes.

The Link Handler assures reliable delivery ofmessages and the supervisor monitors the status of runningprocesses.

If a process fails, the supervisor detects the failureand notifies recovery software to attempt to restart the process.OSE Gateway addresses the limitations of existing technologies byproviding a transparent and supervised mechanism forcommunication among processes across operating systems.

Theimplementation is independent of network addressing schemes ornative application programming interfaces and enables developersto build complex systems at a higher conceptual level, improvingreliability, maintenance and time to market.

Other potential usesof OSE Gateway include tying together legacy embeddedcommunications systems using different operating systems andusing the OSE Link Handler to allow all processes to participatein the OSE network cluster.

The result is improved faulttolerance and efficiency in an existing design.

OSE Gateway andthe OSE message-passing system support any combination of mediaand transport layers, enabling designers to use the sametechnologies when working with media from Ethernet to any of theemerging switched fabric solutions, irrespective of protocol.

OSEGateway supports the use of Windows, Solaris, Linux, and VxWorksoperating systems along with the OSE system.

The OSE Gateway willbe available for beta testing in Q2 of 2002.

The OSE Gatewaydevelopment licence starts at $20,000.