Group communication in an object-based environment

The paper presents a proposal for incorporating a group communication paradigm into an object-based environment. Group communication is an interaction involving an arbitrary number of participants. Its application simplifies specification and implementation of complex systems. Object-oriented programming can significantly profit from the addition of a group mechanisms. The proposed mechanism, Multiple Object Invocation, provides group communication among objects. The paper first presents a model of general structure of group services and the use of group communication in this model. Multiple Object Invocation is presented and its characteristics and application in the general model is discussed. Implementation of Multiple Object Invocation in the Emerald object-oriented language and distributed operating system is presented