Bees provide computing metaphor

Computing jargonistas often try to soften their approach by choosing suitable metaphors — and one of the latest seems to be “hive computing”.

While “grid computing” is in vogue to describe lots of different computers networked to tackle huge computational problems, hive computing designates something more subtle. It reflects the idea that any bee in the hive can be called on to do any job.

Tsunami's flagship toolset, HiveCreator, lets developers write applications that are self-organizing, self- maintaining, and self-healing, according to the company. That means software gets the hardware to work together, keeps the [application] up and running, and recovers it when crashes occur. Tsunami says hive computing is more scalable and can recover from crashes more easily than other cluster-computing approaches.

Unlike grid computing, hive computing is meant for business-style applications, such as transaction processing and database access says Tsunami Research which seems to be taking a lead in commercialising the idea.