A Guide to Suite

Suite is a software system being designed and implemented at Purdue. It supports remote procedure call, active persistent data, and management of ‘‘direct-manipulation’’ user interfaces— three (related) useful services missing from conventional systems. It is ‘‘integrated’’ with conventional systems in that its components are seamless extensions of corresponding components in conventional operating systems and programming languages. A prototype of the system is implemented on a network of workstations executing UNIX, NFS, and X. We have used the prototype to build several interactive applications and our preliminary experience has been encouraging. This report is meant for researchers interested in learning, using, and modifying the system. It motivates and outlines the main components of Suite, and describes how the prototype implementation may be installed and used. It uses the example of a project management tool to illustrate the various components of the system.