Homo or hetero

[Daniel Wengelin <dawe@celsiustech.se>]

Homo or hetero?

I have seen the GNAT for RT-Linux press release. Whenever it is
released, it will be a very interesting product for different projects
I�m affiliated with. However, it leaves me wondering about one thing.

According to my (crude) definition of a homogenous distributed system,
it basically allows data to be correctly interpreted from the native
representation on any node in the distributed system. If data has to be
transformed to a neutral format to be correctly interpreted after a
transfer between nodes, the system is heterogeneous. A homogenous system
allows programs to pass data as it is represented natively between
programs without transformation, which has some obvious benefits and
drawbacks.

So, is a distributed system based on Linux and RT-Linux nodes running
GNAT Ada programs a homogenous system?

Obviously, there are many qualifications to be made. Please, if there is
any light to be shed on the issue!

Rgds, Daniel

PS. Please mail me directly if you can, I don�t come around to reading
the list more than once a month :-(

PPS Why does my spell checker say �homogenous� is OK; as is
�homogeneous�; �heterogenous� is not OK, it only allows �heterogeneous�?
;-)