A Framework for Arbitrary Invocation Semantics

Markus Hof
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Institute for Practical Computer Science
Altenbergerstr. 69, A-4040 Linz
hof@ssw.uni-linz.ac.at

Abstract

Common object oriented systems have a fixed invocation semantic (synchronous procedure call). Some systems extend this concept with a fixed amount of additional semantics (RPC, best effort, asynchronous...). We claim that we have to go a step further and introduce invocation semantics as first class abstractions. We offer the possibility to write or compose completely new invocation semantics. We implemented our ideas in a prototype with two concrete applications. First, we implemented a distributed object system, which introduces new semantics to forward invocations across a network. Second, we decorate local objects with additional semantics, e.g. transparent invocation logging, synchronization semantics...

Paper at the ECOOP'99 PhD Workshop, Lisbon, June 1999, Position Papers from the 9th Workshop for PhD Students in Object-Oriented Systems (edited by M.Awais Rashid, D.Parsons, A. Telea), ISBN-90 386-147/3
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