MIKE: A Distributed object-oriented programming platform on top of the Mach micro-kernel

This paper describes the architecture and implementation of MIKE a version of the IK distributed persistent object oriented programming platform built on top of the Mach microkernel MIKE s primary goal is to o er a single object oriented programming paradigm for writing distributed applications In MIKE an application programmer can use C almost as he would in a non distributed system The platform supports ne grained objects which can be invoked in a location trans parent way and whose references can be exchanged freely as invocation parameters These objects are potentially persistent MIKE supports the abstraction of one level store persistent objects are transparently loaded on demand when rst invoked and saved to disk when the application terminates Class objects are special persistent ob jects which are dynamically linked when needed The platform also o ers distributed garbage collection of non persistent objects This paper discusses how MIKE makes use of Mach s features to o er the func tionality described above and the techniques used to achieve good performance MIKE is compared with the Unix versions of IK to evaluate the bene ts of using Mach ab stractions