Abstract: A distributed computer system, including a group of nodes. Each of the nodes have a network operating system, enabling one-to-one messages and one-to-several messages between said nodes, a first function capable of marking a pending message as in error, a node failure storage function, and a second function. The second function being responsive to the node failure storage function indicating a given node as failing, for calling said first function to force marking selected messages to that given node into error, the selected messages include pending messages which satisfy a given condition.

Abstract: The environment is based on a computer system, comprising a target and a host, including a debugger, capable of issuing commands to obtain information on the target. The host further has a server, capable of communicating with the target, generally through a target agent, to access target condition data concerning target objects. The server has a server module for elaborating, maintaining and giving access to an object-oriented tree representation of the target objects. The target condition data are attributes of the target objects, each of which also has available operations and methods. A survey tool interface is capable of answering at least some of the debugger commands with information derived from said tree representation. The commands are converted into available operations.