Bindings between names and objects in a persistent system

The paper addresses the issues of uniformity and simplicity in the area of the bindings between user object references (names) and system object references in persistent systems. Uniform treatment of these entities will allow simplification of the mechanisms which handle them. The authors propose a design, following an object-based approach, in which user environments are structured as collections of bindings. All objects which a user may access have a corresponding binding in the user´s environment. All bindings are handled by the same mechanisms. There are no special cases-all data structures in the system (or the objects used to contain the data structures) are regarded as conceptually equivalent for purposes of storage, retrieval and activation. This ensures uniformity across the name space