


                                                                   netobjd(1)



   NAME
     nneettoobbjjdd - the Network Object agent daemon

   SYNTAX
     nneettoobbjjdd &

   DESCRIPTION

     The Network Objects package provides a simple but powerful facility for
     remote method invocation in the context of Modula3.  Under Network
     Objects, all subtypes of the object type NetObj.T are treated specially
     in that they can be passed to remote address spaces by reference.  This
     remote reference appears at the destination as a surrogate object  which
     is a subtype of the original object type.  If the original type has
     methods, these methods can be remotely invoked through the surrogate.

     The nneettoobbjjdd program provides a mechanism to publish objects for use by
     other address spaces.  It implements a table which maps textual into
     objects.  A service provider, for example, might advertise its service
     by registering an object with nneettoobbjjdd under some well-defined name.
     Similarly, a client might gain access to this service by retrieving the
     server's object from the nneettoobbjjdd insatnce on the server's machine.

     There should be only one instance of nneettoobbjjdd per machine.  This one
     instance is the machine-wide default agent for all imports and exports
     of network objects.

     The nneettoobbjjdd program listens on a well known socket (currently TCP socket
     9786) for incoming requests.

   DOCUMENTATION

     A reference manual (SRC Research Report 115) can be found in:

          /proj/doc/NetObjMan.ps

   RESTRICTIONS

     Since nneettoobbjjdd is often run in background, it is easy to forget that an
     instance is running.  The second instance of nneettoobbjjdd will fail with a
     TCP error when it attempts to open its listener socket.

     If an instance of nneettoobbjjdd dies, all of the objects that were registered
     in its table are lost.  There currently is no standard mechanism for
     restarting netobj after a failure.  Even if nneettoobbjjdd is restarted, there
     is currently no stable record of the objects held by previous
     instantiations.

   AUTHOR
     Ted Wobber

     Copyright 1994 Digital Equipment Corporation.
     Distributed only by permission.

     Last modified on Thu May 12 15:53:47 PDT 1994 by wobber




