Prior to reading this paper, I had no knowledge of the so-called accomplishments related to the Tandem Corporation or the Guardian operating system.
The Tandem/16 naming convention appears to be complex compared to what we are used to with the likes of Linux, Solaris, Mac OS, and Windows. I think the only possible advantage of the naming convention might be knowing whether or not the process belongs to the system or user and if the process is local or external. The use of $, #, \ is a bit overkill. Give me a PID and an ASCII name, and I am ready to go.
I can't say I have had the pleasure of working on fault-tolerant systems as described in this chapter. My experience is primarily in that of redundant systems and clusters which is a slightly different approach. If a CPU or disk failed causing the server to be non-responsive, the processes failover to other nodes to take over the load with minimal to nil downtime. The failed server could then be repaired and brought back online with no noticeable impacts.
It is interesting how the ownership of Tandem came full circle. Engineers had left HP to form their own company only to get saved by Compaq and eventually bought by HP. It was a nice run while it lasted. Some of the "benefits" of working for Tandem have carried over into some companies when trying to lure innovative personnel. Unfortunately, for some companies, benefits are usually the first things to get cut when budget reduction comes into play.
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