Novel gateway interconnects operating systems

OSE Systems describes OSE Gateway as a unique software solution for enabling connectivity at the operating system level.

OSE Systems describes OSE Gateway as a unique software solution for enabling connectivity at the operating system level.

OSE Gateway provides a way for Windows, Solaris, Linux and VxWorks to participate in a heterogeneous distributed system.

This design incorporates the same message-passing technology used by the OSE operating system and tightly integrates multiple operating systems into an efficient and fault-tolerant distributed system.

A primary use of the OSE Gateway is in designs where an OSE communications device is managed by a Windows or Solaris workstation.

Today, the interface between the device and its management console is implemented through software mechanisms from the enterprise world such as TCP sockets or CORBA.

These alternatives lack the tight integration of operating system components and do not inherently provide fault tolerance to individual components.

The result is a complex mixture of software technologies that may not provide the required level of performance and reliability.

"OSE Gateway is the first embedded systems product that enables heterogeneous distributed computing at the operating system level", said Bob Monkman, chief technical strategist for OSE Systems.

"Engineers now have the opportunity to exercise a high degree of creativity when designing high-reliability distributed systems for communications, networking and other distributed applications".

OSE Gateway incorporates a library through which a client application running on a non-OSE operating system communicates with an OSE distributed system.

This library, which is provided in source code for easy customisation, interfaces with the OSE Gateway daemon running on that operating system.

This Gateway daemon enables the client process to behave as an OSE process to the OSE distributed system and provides the ability for that process to appear identical to those running on the OSE operating system.

The OSE Link Handler complements the Gateway by connecting all nodes of the distributed system and enabling OSE's built-in high-level supervisor across the same nodes.

The Link Handler assures reliable delivery of messages and the supervisor monitors the status of running processes.

If a process fails, the supervisor detects the failure and notifies recovery software to attempt to restart the process.

OSE Gateway addresses the limitations of existing technologies by providing a transparent and supervised mechanism for communication among processes across operating systems.

The implementation is independent of network addressing schemes or native application programming interfaces and enables developers to build complex systems at a higher conceptual level, improving reliability, maintenance and time to market.

Other potential uses of OSE Gateway include tying together legacy embedded communications systems using different operating systems and using the OSE Link Handler to allow all processes to participate in the OSE network cluster.

The result is improved fault tolerance and efficiency in an existing design.

OSE Gateway and the OSE message-passing system support any combination of media and transport layers, enabling designers to use the same technologies when working with media from Ethernet to any of the emerging switched fabric solutions, irrespective of protocol.

OSE Gateway supports the use of Windows, Solaris, Linux, and VxWorks operating systems along with the OSE system.

The OSE Gateway will be available for beta testing in Q2 of 2002.

The OSE Gateway development licence starts at $20,000.

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