Layered, Server-based Support for Object-Oriented Application Development

Guruduth Banavar, Douglas Orr, Gary Lindstrom
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112
{banavar,dbo,lindstrom}@cs.utah.edu

Abstract

This paper advocates the idea that the physical modularity (file structure) of application components supported by conventional OS environments can be elevated to the level of logical modularity, which in turn can directly support application development in an object-oriented manner. We demonstrate this idea through a system-wide server that manages the manipulation of such components effctively. The server is designed to be a fundamental operating system service responsible for binding and mapping component instances into client address spaces. We show how this model solves some longstanding problems with the management of application components in existing application development environments. We demonstrate that this model's effectiveness derives from its support for the cornerstones of OO programming: classes and their instances, encapsulation, and several forms of inheritance.

Full paper appears as "Best Paper" in Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems, Lund, Sweden, August 1995. Also available as University of Utah Computer Science Technical Report UUCS-95-007.


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Last modified on Thu Aug 17 1995