DECS: an environment for developing cooperative distributed software systems

This paper describes the design and implementation of an environment for developing cooperative distributed applications. Salient features of this environment include an extensible toolkit of cooperative mechanisms called agencies. An agency is a multi-site flexible entity that encapsulates communication and distribution concerns and exports an object oriented server type local interface to it's clients. The development environment provides a graphical user interface for composing distributed applications and new components from existing components.<
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