Distributed application development using ASTRA-an asynchronous remote procedure call mechanism

The city-drivethru simulator is a distributed application that allows its users to drive interactively through a computer city. It makes use of a client program to interact with its users while its 3 servers display the scenery. The success of this application depends heavily on the synchronization of the displays by the 3 servers. ASTRA, the asynchronous RPC facility built within the SHILPA Distributed Computing Environment, is used for interprocess communication between the client and servers to allow simultaneous display of the scenery by the 3 servers. In addition, it effectively serves as a synchronization tool which is used by the client to synchronize the 3 servers. This paper gives a description of the city-drivethru simulator application followed by the findings of the performance tests conducted to investigate the influence of various variables on the application's performance.