remote process communication

["Robert S. Kirk" <rsk@samson.cadr.dialnet.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Thu, 08 Sep 88 14:18:52 EDT
    From: bds@mitre-bedford.ARPA
    We need to make 2 or more Symbolics 36xx pass messages back
    and forth between processes.  More explicitly, we want to run
    a database on one machine and 1 or more interfaces on other machines.
    Getting processes to talk to each other on the same machine is no
    problem.  Can anyone please tell me how to get them to talk to
    each other when they're on different machines?  Thanks.

    Barry Smith
    bds@mitre-bedford.arpa

I've played the game with both Symbolics to Symbolics and Symbolics to
Sun using some relatively simple file mailboxes.  You just need to set
up a process which polls the file directory to see if any files have
come in.  One neat trick is to put some useful function call(s) in the
file which you send to the remote machine.  Then when the remote machine
senses the file, it can load it, evaluating whatever the requester
desired.

Another approach might be to use remote eval service.  I have not tried
this one, but it may be better because you don't have to wait for the
file watch polling process to see the file.