Our framework efforts are similar to recent metacomputing endeavors in that we use the Internet as a resource for concurrent computations. Although our framework could be used for metacomputing applications, we provide neither seamless parallelism nor facilities for developing high-performance applications. Rather, we provide mechanisms for programmers to develop distributed system components and personal networks quickly, and we plan to provide mechanisms for non-programmers to easily customize their components and personal networks. Component Frameworks Many other framework systems also have the goal of creating distributed system components. Unlike Fortran M, sessions provide a hybrid technique for running communicating distributed processes which are frozen when they are not performing any work, yet have persistent state that can be revived whenever a new session is initiated.
Many software products allow collaboration using the Internet.