Polymorphism, persistence and software re-use in a strongly typed object-oriented environment

The major requirements of a system for software re-use are that it must provide an abstraction mechanism for adequately describing the components, a mechanism for naming and storing the components, and a mechanism for composing new objects out of existing components. This paper describes a polymorphic type system that may be used to describe generic components and a persistence mechanism that may be used to name, store and compose components. By integrating the two, a strongly typed persistent environment that is an ideal base as a system for software re-use is obtained.