AskemosDesign

The way and why that way.

This paper used to be the best one about the design. While it's ageing, it's still recommented to be read it first. Or see also the slides of the talk Askemos - Holons at the market place at netobjectdays.org 2002.

Distributed systems face many problems. Web users are subject to random disruption of performance and service. All kinds of compatibility issues make moving data between devices is a major headache. Computer networks require significant expertise to configure and maintain. The principal programming abstractions available today-processes, threads, files, and sockets-do not adequately address the problems of managing information, keeping information available, true and secure. (See the .NET page if you did not yet get that point.)

To overcome this accidental hardship Askemos defines an autonomous, virtual machine on document level, which works distributed among independent components (companies, departments etc.). Programmers are only concerned with application level questions, which are an inherent part of their tasks.

Askemos provides an environment to a) hold information, services and processes in form of a graph (network) of documents and b) to execute and combine those. As such it's similar to grid computing. [TODO: check for similarities and differences]

Semistructured and extendable data and application specific, executable rules are both modelled in a system independent way. These models are almost completely defined using public and freely available standards. Because of this public processable definition it becomes possible to trade services within the network as well as the underlying resources.

Long term availability is assured by selecting standards, towards the market converges and which are guaranteed to be available independent of institutions or companies and their property claims.

Protection in the interest of multilateral trust is based on a combination of elements: a) there is not central authority, which could be abused b) relevant meta data is associated with each object for legal proofs, this creates the important type of a deed c) Askemos works as a network where transaction are executed in a distributed manner with voting - correct results will be given even if one of the nodes (e.g., the other party of a contract) made illegal changes. (In reality one can still create fake evidence, but at least the creator and time of creation can no longer be faked. That's a relieve for justice problems like here.)

A second advantage of the redundant distributed execution is a win in availability.

Askemos assumes a independent base technology assuring a secure data exchange between nodes of the net. This is an ideal and impossible assertion, which is in practice constantly approximated by application transparent integration of required technology. (These days this calls for cryptography.)

A second base technology is the user interaction tier. This is typically served by web browsers, desktop tools specialized to other tasks or mobile appliances.

AskemosBackground

Philosphy. Understanding natural languages. Structuralism. Communication. Trust, law, state and forms of governments. (Why are computer systems still hierarchical, while the real world goes democracy?) RelatedProjects

AskemosHLD

High level design. This design is driven only by requirements which derive from the task (scope). Requirements, which are implementation related go into the LLD.

LLD

Low level design: choice of implementation language, technology, frameworks, standards. Implementation decisions, tradeoffs and caveat.