[wellylug] Distributed OOP Concept

[Timothy Goddard]

This message is targetted as the other new member at the meeting this
evening, whose name I never got, who mentioned that he was planning
something to do with designing an object-oriented programming system
where objects could be shared across the network.

Ruby already seems to have a similar system that might serve as a useful
base concept or save you a lot of work. I was just reading some info
about it and found a reference to Distributed Ruby (DRb).

Basically you can define a class on the 'server' end, create a series of
methods on that object, and create a server instance of it. Clients then
start up a DRb client object which acts as a proxy for the server
object, making it appear as if everything is happening locally while the
code is executed on the server. Ruby also comes with tools for
serialising objects (Marshal) to allow them to be passed easily between
computers.

Reference: http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ospace.html
under "Distributed Ruby"

Good luck,

Timothy (The new member who uses SuSE and mentioned learning Ruby)