Providing Distributed Capabilities for the Smalltalk -80 System
01 January 1986
The smalltalk-80 system is an object-oriented programming language and environment. Object-oriented languages differ from traditional computer languages in that the notions of program and data are merged. Entities in an object-oriented environment consist of data and a set of operations which can be performed on that data. This concept of data encapsulation makes object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk well-suited to supporting distributed applications. The proposed thesis involves the development of additions to the Smalltalk-80 system which allow for limited distributed capabilities. The thesis will consist primarily of two parts. The first part will describe the design of extensions to the Smalltalk-80 system which permit transparent access and manipulation of data residing on remote Smalltalk hosts. Software to implement this design will be included. The software will be written in the Smalltalk programming language. The second part of the thesis will discuss how the proposed implementation compares to other distributed object-oriented systems. Issues such as efficiency and resilency will be considered.