The objective of the ESPRIT project COMANDOS (Construction and Management of Distributed Open Systems) is to specify and construct an integrated platform for programming and operating multi-vendor distributed systems. This platform is targeted at applications programmers and system integrators, and aims to reduce the overall cost of the development, maintenance, , and evolution of large distributed applications. This objective was achieved by the development of innovative solutions based on the integration of existing and emerging technologies. For the development of these applications, the COMANDOS platform includes infrastructure supporting: concurrent distributed computations; storage and retrieval of persistent data; use of multiple programming languages including existing languages; reusable and extensible software modules; security and protection of data; on-fine management; and access to pre-existing applications and information systems. The book provides a general presentation of the COMANDOS platform, structured into two parts. The first part provides a user view of the platform and focuses on its functionality, on design choices, and innovative aspects.
The second part gives an overview of the implementation of the platform.