Brad, I did another read through many of the old (couple weeks old) e-mail messages that you and Jarl posted about the functions of the DL and BL. I think I understand things a bit better now. My confusion came from thinking that the BL (GMS) would handle most of the functionality of the current Loci middle. So, I questioned what the DL would be used for. But now I realize that the DL is the real 'middle' of VSh, or at least the middle used for network construction. I also see now where the split is between build-time (when the network is constructed by the user) and run-time (when the network is executed). Maybe in the summary could show this split: Build-Time System User Interfaces Definitions Layer Run-Time System Brokering Layer Processing Layer In recent e-mails, you were calling this 'run-time system' the 'processing system', which made me think you were talking about the PL. So, I'm sorry I was so hard on you :-) I will need to update my distributed filesystem specification to reflect my new understanding. Oh, and can you or Jarl draw a diagram showing how 2 remote sessions of VSh will work together? Also, I'd like us to consider making an ADDITIONAL UI2DL protocol using CORBA, so that interfaces can be made to use sockets OR CORBA. What do you think? Cheers. Jeff -- +----------------------------------+ | J.W. Bizzaro | | | | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ | | | | BIOINFORMATICS.ORG | | The Open Lab | | | | http://bioinformatics.org/ | +----------------------------------+