A message-based distributed kernel for a full heterogeneous environment

This paper presents the design and implementation of a message-based distributed operating system kernel NDOS. The main purpose of the kernel is to support a distributed data processing system and a distributed DBMS. It uses the abstraction of communication between processes as basic mechanism. In NDOS, services and facilities such as message passing and process synchronization, which are related to IPC and may cause the change of the state of a process, are integrated into a single concept, an event. The initial version of NDOS kernel has been implemented on a full heterogeneous environment of different machines, LANs, and OSs with the original high-layered systems and applications are still provided.