Aladdin Project - Introduction

Aladdin Project

Introduction

Design

Documents

Welcome

Imagine purchasing a new factory-shipped Apple computer, connecting to the network, and within minutes, using a vast collection of “soft computing resources” from clip-art and sounds to applications ranging from compilers and web browsers to office productivity suites. The user simply needs to have access to an Internet connection, then download and run a single installer package. After these few steps, the new Macintosh computer has gained seamless access to online resources that appear to have been shipped by Apple with the OS.

The Aladdin project will attempt to architect a system that organizes a large amount of “soft computing resources” and provides effortless access to these resources on Macintosh computer clients. From a Macintosh client end-user perspective, all the “soft computing resources” will appear to be stored locally on their hard disk and able to be utilized without the task of searching and installing the resource from the World Wide Web. But, apart from cached local copies, the “soft computing resources” are actually stored on servers dispersed around the world using distributed networking technology. When connected to the distributed network, Aladdin, the enduser can automatically run the latest version of applications (equipped with their corresponding security updates) and other resources supported by his/her version of the Mac OS X operating system. Aladdin will employ the OpenAFS distributed file system to implement its network of resource servers.