Implementing concurrency control in reliable distributed object-oriented systems

Abstract

One of the key concepts available in many object-oriented programming languages is that of type-inheritance, which permits new types to be derived from, and inherit the capabilities of, old types. This paper describes how to exploit this property in a very simple fashion to implement object-oriented concurrency control. We show how by using type-inheritance, objects may control their own level of concurrency in a type-specific manner. Simple examples demonstrate the applicability of the approach. The implementation technique described here is being used to develop Arjuna, a fault-tolerant distributed programming system supporting atomic actions.