In 2010 we will extend the AgileWiki Desktop to be fully distributed--a true nettop. Desktop rolons will become peer rolons, with all the desktop rolons on all the systems where the user has an account coordinating to provide a single view, regardless of which system the user connects directly to with an internet browser. Indeed, the user can connect to several different servers at the same time and all of the desktops will have the same display. (This makes for a very scalable demo.) Icon Shortcut Rolons and Window Rolons will also become Peer Rolons. This is relatively easy to do as these wrapper rolons do not hold a great deal of state. Every wrapper rolon in a desktop will have a peer in all the other desktops, but only the wrapper rolon which is in the same ark (server) as the referent rolon has wrapping and viewing links. All the other peer wrapper rolons then serve only to pass messages to the peer which is local to the referent rolon. The only operations which need to be duplicated on all of a user's peer desktop are the opening and closing of wrapper rolons, which is needed to keep all the peer desktops in sync. Note that the only additional information that peer wrapper rolons will need is a reference to the server, which will only change when falling over to the hot-backup. Network outages then are handled quite simply. Icon shortcuts which reference an inaccessible server are disabled. Windows which reference an inaccessible server are minimized and disabled. |