Overview of the DRYAD trading system implementation

The Open Distributed Processing Reference Model (ODP-RM) of ISO and ITU defines a set of basic services which every open system has to support and use. One of such services is the trading function. The purpose of the trading function is to help objects, for example application program components, to discover target objects in a dynamic network environment. In this paper, we introduce trading as means to establish contracts between objects. Contract establishment facilitates distribution transparent access of services over autonomously administered subsystems. We also discuss an experimental prototype of an ODP like trading system. The platform for the DRYAD trader is a UNIX environment supplemented with a special-purpose database management system.