SR NWT 002284 : ISSUE 2

The Distributed Processing Environment (DPE) plays a major role in the overall INA architecture, providing the basic communications infrastructure. This document describes in detail the architecture and components of the DPE, along with the functionality each part provides and key issues that are related to distributed processing. The INA Framework Architecture specifies several deployment and interoperability principles that should be adhered to by vendor supplied products in INA networks. Two important principles are that software components within INA nodes should be composed of units called building blocks, each of which can be independently installed and maintained and that building blocks should interact via contacts, which are interfaces that adhere to certain principles specified in the OSCA architecture.