The Amadeus GRT - Generic Runtime Support for Distributed Persistent Programming

Abstract

Many object-oriented programming language implementations have been estcndcd to support persistence, dist,ribut,ion or atomicity by integrating the necessary a,dditional support, with t,he language's runt,ime library.We argue tha.t a better approach is to provide a. Generic Runtime library (the GRT) which imple-ments that part of the support which is independent.of any langua.ge.The GRT should be designed to interfa.ce to a langua.ge'sexisting runtime in such a way that the language's local object reference format and invocation mechanism can be retained.Hence exist.ingcompilers do not necessarily have to be modified, and a range of different object,-oriented languages can be supporkd simultaneously.This a.pproach 1la.s significant merits including: the ease with which a la.nguage ca.n be extended; the sophistication of the underlying support immediately available to a. la.nguage implementer; a.nd the ability to support fine-grain& language interworking.