Narratives of space and time: visualization for distributed applications

Programmers of distributed applications face the challenge of building communicating processes (CP) in a complex, heterogeneous network with distributed data and services. The tools necessary to build these systems are emerging, but widespread acceptance will require effective use of visualization and user interface technologies to reduce complexity.In this paper, we outline a plan and describe some initial results for visualizing three aspects of distributed applications• X.500 [25) directory data• Internet network and routing maps [27]• Hermes [42] communicating processesThese are key components of the Consortium for Reliable Distributed Systems (CORDS) research effort described elsewhere in these proceedings [41]. An introductory section describes the CORDS model for distributed processing. The resultant general visualization requirements are summarized. These put the research plan into context.