Using metaobject protocols to structure operating systems

To accommodate the rapid changes in computing technology and the increasing demands of applications, operating systems must be made flexible and extensible. Although the object-oriented approach makes operating systems customisable, its “black-box” nature makes it hard to achieve such customisability. We analyse some important problems with the object-oriented approach, and suggest using metaobject protocols to solve the problems. We discuss the use of metaobject protocols to construct metaobjects that provide transparent support to application programmers for non-functional requirements such as fault tolerance, and show how this approach is flexible and customisable if necessary