MESA

Developed by:
Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto, California, USA L. G. Reid and P.C. Karlton

Short Description:
Mesa is a distributed file system that views processes as cooperative and allows therefore to support a more sophisticated sharing of files among independent processes. If one process wishes to use a file in a way that conflicts with the way that a second process is using the file, the process that is using the file may be asked to relinquish it. The Mesa file system facilitates inter-process cooperation by asking clients to provide procedures that the file system can call to ask the client to give up a f ile or tell the client that a file is available.

Model: loosely-coupled
Properties: sophisticated locking mechanism
Transparency: location, access, concurrency
Running on: Xerox Workstation and Pilot OS
Date: 1982

References:
L. G. Reid and P.C. Karlton: "A File System Supporting Cooperation between Programs". ACM Proc. of the 9th Symposium on Operating System Principles, October 1983.