Functional addressing in Gutenberg: Interprocess communication without process identifiers

An interprocess communication facility provided by the kernel of the Gutenberg experimental operating system is presented. In Gutenberg all interprocess communication is via channels (ports) that are typed by the service which can be requested on them. Ports are created by reference to their service without using the identifier of the process providing the service, a technique the authors refer to as functional addressing. By using functional addressing, interprocess transfer of port use privileges and a new concept of cooperation class, arbitrary process interconnection topologies can be achieved without any explicit use of process identifiers by processes. Examples of object sharing with abstract data type managers and data-driven protocols of database query execution are presented to illustrate the methods of constructing systems of cooperation processes using the Gutenberg system.