Rendezvous: an architecture for synchronous multi-user applications
John F. Patterson, Ralph D. Hill, Steven L. Rohall, Scott W. Meeks · 1990
Rendezvous is an architecture for creating synchronous multi-user applications. It consists of two parts: a run-time architecture for managing the multi-user session and a start-up architecture for managing the network connectivity. The run-time architecture is based on a User Interface Management System called MEL, which is a language extension to Common Lisp providing support for graphics operations, object-oriented programming, and constraints. Constraints are used to manage three dimensions of sharing: sharing of underlying information, sharing of views, and sharing of access. The start-up architecture decouples invoking and joining an application so that not all users need be known when the application is started. At present, the run-time architecture is completed and running test applications. As a first test of the complete Rendezvous architecture, we will implement a multi-user card game by the end of the summer.