DSOM currently supports two types of distribution:

• Distribution among processes on the same machine, which is referred to as Workstation DSOM

• Distribution among a network of machines, which is referred to as Workgroup DSOM.

Only Workstation DSOM is provided with the OS/2 operating system.

DSOM is initially disabled in the OS/2 operating system. There are two reasons for this:

• Performance

• DSOM can be easily activated as required. Not all users will require DSOM to be active. Therefore, they should not be penalized with the additional system overhead.

DSOM packaged with the OS/2 operating system consists of two parts:

• DSOM daemon which is also referred to as SOMDD

• Workplace Shell DSOM server (WPDS).

The DSOM daemon (SOMDD) has a very important role and must be running at all times in order to communicate between processes.

The Workplace Shell DSOM server is a generic server whose server class is wpdServer and is adequate for many environments. The Workplace Shell DSOM server behaves as a simple server. In that, it simply receives requests and executes them synchronously. The server creates its server object from the derived class SOMDServer and will load any class libraries it needs on demand. For more complex environments where the default server does not provide the needed functions, the SOMObjects Developer Toolkit User's Guide provides details for writing your own DSOM server.