ANNOUNCE - TxRx, an ONC RPC extension for Tcl
Cristian Mata
TxRx - an ONC RPC extension for Tcl7.5.
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(TxRx stands for Transmit/Receive)
See http://www.cs.sunsyb.edu/~cristian/txrx.html for details.
TxRx is a dynamically loadable package that enables Tcl programs
to call or service Remote Procedure Calls (RPC).
The RPC implementation complies with the RPC Internet standard
(RFC 1831) developed by SUN Microsystems. NFS (a distributed file
system with over 10 million seats installed) uses ONC RPC for
client-server communication. ONC RPC has a freely available
implementation, is well documented and has largely been responsible
for the wave of client-server applications.
TxRx helps in the development of distributed applications that are
compatible with ONC RPC. For example, with TxRx it becomes possible
to write in Tcl a WebNFS client (and server!) -- see story about
WebNFS at http://www.sun.com.
TxRx has the following goals:
- reduce the time required to develop client-server
applications. It does this by providing an interpreter that
converts external data representations (XDR - RFC 1832)
to/from Tcl lists.
- achieve portability across multiple plaforms. TxRx is developed
and tested with Windows'95, IRIX5.3, SunOS and Solaris2. It
should compile without problems on most other platforms
Tcl supports.
- foster development of new communication protocols. ONC RPC is
just one of a family. ONC RPC allows client calls to be
performed without waiting for a reply (batching). Using the base
commands of TxRx it becomes possible to define new
ways of interaction between distributed applications.
TxRx is available in source
ftp://ftp.cs.sunysb.edu/pub/students/cristian
and in binary for several common platforms. TxRx is distributed under
the same license terms as Tcl.
For further information please send mail to cris...@cs.sunysb.edu.
-- Cristian
ps. if you haven't tried out my updated Tcl plugin demo please do so
at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~cristian/PlayMoog.html.