In this architecture a programming language provides remote service interfaces for the heterogeneous distributed system environment. This language is a flexible and efficient medium for implementing service function protocols. In essence, clients and servers communicate by programming one another. Since distributed systems are becoming a promising alternative for high performance computer architecture, this paper is welcome. From the user's point of view, a distributed system is usually seen as a distributed file system.
Services are accessible via an operating system type of interface.
The author's approach is different. The key idea is to provide an architecture in which communication follows a programming paradigm. The remote access to system services by clients and the communication between clients and servers occur by programming in a programming language developed for this purpose. The first two sections of the paper briefly survey the topic and discuss current approaches to service interface design in Ethernet-like distributed systems. Section 3 outlines the NCL specifications by providing NCL expressions, classes, and element types.