Abstract
This report describes the Remote File Access (RFA) component of the network operating system, which is being implemented in the joint project “Distributed Academic Computing” (DAC) of the University of Karlsruhe and IBM’s European Networking Center at Heidelberg. The DAC project and the RFA component put major emphasis on the bridging of the boundaries of heterogeneity and of remoteness transparent to the user. Accordingly, this report investigates common concepts of the file systems of VM/CMS, VAX VMS, PC DOS and Unix.
RFA implements a global homogeneous file system on the base of the heterogeneous nodes. The file naming structure of RFA is hierarchical; the file structure is sequential. Sets of global files are bound explicitly into the users environment. The file name translator of RFA associates local aliases to global file names. Thus, global files can be accessed transparently by their local name in the same way as local files. The conversion among the different data representations and the conversion from record oriented to byte oriented file structures is done by the presentation services of the DAC kernel; this kernel is also used for the communication between RFA entities (i.e. nodes) [1].
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© 1987 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hollberg, U., Schmutz, H., Silberbusch, P. (1987). Remote File Access. In: Gerner, N., Spaniol, O. (eds) Kommunikation in Verteilten Systemen. Informatik-Fachberichte, vol 130. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71655-3_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71655-3_25
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