Design, implementation and evaluation of a distributed file service for collaborative engineering environments

Describes the development of a file service for distributed heterogeneous computer systems. This service is part of a service platform that is designed to support the integration of technical application systems as well as cooperative product development in engineering environments. The paper starts with user requirements for integration and cooperation. Afterwards, considerations of distributed file services and communication-oriented aspects are discussed. In particular, we present a file service architecture consisting of a file management protocol that provides users and applications with a transparent view of file names and file storage locations, and an ISO FTAM-based explicit file transfer protocol that provides efficient file transfer between heterogeneous application systems. To achieve an acceptable performance level, the protocol was tailored to requirements that are typical for engineering environments. We conclude with a discussion of a prototype implementation and measured performance results