Experiences with an Object-Oriented Architecture for Developing Dynamically Extensible Distributed System Management Software

Developing extensible, robust, and efficient distributedapplications is a complex task. To help alleviate this complexity, we have developed the ADAPTIVE Service eXecutive (ASX) framework. ASX is an object-oriented framework composed of automated tools and reusable C++ components. These tools and components simplify the development, configuration, and reconfiguration of distributed applications in a heterogeneous environment. Using ASX applications may be configured dynamically to contain multiple network services that execute concurrently in one or more processes or threads. Components in theASX framework have been ported to UNIX and Windows NT and are currently being used in a number of large-scale production distributed systems. This paper describes our experience gained using the ASX framework to build highly modular, reusable, and extensible software for a family of distributed system management applications.