Flexible address space sharing mechanisms in the GALAXY distributed operating system

Data sharing mechanisms are proposed that are flexible enough to be dynamically tuned to select the most efficient approach for meeting the varying requirements of different user applications. Some of the attractive features of this approach are: (1) granularity of name assignment to data objects, (2) allowing processes to access the desired data either by the name of the file or memory object in which the desired data is stored or by the name of the process object handling the desired data at the time of access, (3) automatic selection of the most efficient approach for address space sharing, and (4) flexibility given to the users for relaxing the consistency requirements based on their applications´ needs. The concepts and mechanisms proposed have been developed in the GALAXY distributed operating system. GALAXY is an object based distributed operating system in which processes, files, devices, nodes, etc. are all viewed as an object