Synchronizing shared objects

Object oriented programming and parallel programming are two important and evolving areas in computer science. Much research has been carried out in each of the two programming disciplines, but little effort has been put on combining the two areas. The authors discuss a major problem of parallel programming: synchronization of concurrent processes using a shared object. Discussing the example of the bounded buffer, they demonstrate how to build a high structured shared object based on primitive constructs in an object oriented manner. They use the object oriented programming environment Smalltalk-80 which supports basic process management and synchronization tools (semaphores). The ideas presented were realized in a prototype of a distributed directory service according to the CCIT X.500 standard