GOBS Facilitates use of Objects on Different Nodes

Inter process communication (IPC) in INtime is implemented with respective objects, e.g., semaphores, message queues, mailboxes. These objects are local to the node where they have been created.

Global objects technology allows access to the objects from any node in the system. Every node runs GOBSmgr to implement global objects.

If a process wants to use an object on another node, GOBSmgr will create and maintain a reference object to that object. The reference object then can be used like a local object. GOBSmgr can support any object in nodes that share the same host.

If the node is located on another host, GOBSmgr transparently will use GOBSnet to interact with the objects on that node. There is only one GOBSnet process on each host.

As is common for distributed systems, global objects must not assume that the object on the other node is always available. Thus, GOBSmgr relies on DSM’s service to monitor the dependency of the reference object to the object on the other node.