METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENABLING A PERSISTENT METASTATE FOR OBJECTS IN AN OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT

摘要

A method and apparatus have been proposed that enable the maintenance of multiple metastates for persistent objects without increasing the size of object references. An object reference data structure is provided having a key that contains the object's universally unique identifier (UUID) and other comprehensive common information. Tables maintained in memory or persistent storage by server processing include tuples with keys and metastates for persistent objects. Techniques for interacting with the object for exchange of metastates and lifecycle handling are also provided, such as object creation, passivation (removal from memory), reactivation (restore to memory) and removal. Several types of metastates can be added without having to reimplement the server that manages persistent objects.