Object Management in Distributed Information Systems

Abstract

A simple model for object sharing in distributed office information systems is described. The model provides a small set of operators for object definition, manipulation, and retrieval in a distributed environment, modeled as a logical network of workstations. Relationships among objects can be established across work station boundaries, objects are relocatable within the distributed environment, and mechanisms are provided for access control and the dynamic sharing of objects among individual work stations. An object naming convention supports location-transparent object references; that is, objects can be referenced by user-defined names rather than by addresses. The primitive operations introduced can be used as the basis for the specification and stepwise development of office information models and systems of increasing complexity. An experimental prototype implementation of the distributed object sharing model is described. © 1984, ACM. All rights reserved.