Channel reification: a reflective model for distributed computation

The paper presents a new reflective model, called Channel Reification, which can be used in distributed computations to overcome difficulties experienced by other models in the literature when monitoring communication among objects. The channel is an extension of the message reification model. A channel is a communication manager incarnating successive messages exchanges by two objects: its application ranges between those of message reification and those of meta object model. After a brief review of existing reflective models and how reflections can be used in distributed systems, channel reification is presented and compared to the widely used meta object model. Applications of channel reification to protocol implementation, and to fault tolerant object systems are shown. Future extensions to this model are also summarized