An open visual model for object-oriented operating systems

Flexibility and user-customizability are amongst the potential benefits of reorganizing and restructuring operating systems using object-orientation. However, operating systems are often designed as black boxes whose internals cannot easily be examined or tailored by the user or application. As a black box, the complexity of an operating system appears to grow as additional features and options are added, We present an “open” visual model for object-oriented operating systems that supports browsing, manipulation, and programming. The model exploits the reification of all operating system mechanisms and policies as classified objects to provide interactive visualization, evaluation, and configuration of specialized services and features. The model supports exploration of the dynamic interaction of subsystems within the operating system including comparisons between the abstract architectural properties of the system like its design patterns and specific specializations and customizations of the implementation. This paper describes various visualization experiments and actual experiences of using an implementation of our approach in the Choices object-oriented operating system