Hierarchical object groups in distributed operating systems

A description is given of a novel concept and mechanism, called an object group, that realizes hierarchical, integrated object processing and management. Object groups can be used as a software basis for constructing object-based distributed systems. They support hierarchical control of objects, group-oriented communications, group access control, group resource management, and some generic operations on groups, providing consistent and uniform interfaces. Applications include job control, parallel processing, servers, object pools, hierarchical resource management, and so on. Some design issues are presented, and an implementation on a network-transparent global distributed system, which is under development, is discussed