Supporting user autonomy and object sharing in distributed systems: The RHODOS trading service

It is demonstrated that the design of a naming facility for the RHODOS system that provides the maximum possible autonomy and flexibility to users yet at the same time allows them to share all accessible objects is feasible. It is shown that autonomy and sharing can be achieved if four basic constructs are introduced. First, two groups of sharable objects are distinguished in the RHODOS domain: those owned by the system and those owned by each individual user. Second, these groups of objects form separate system domain and user domains, respectively. Third, the possibility of exporting and importing objects to/from other domains is introduced. Fourth, exported and imported objects (sharable objects) belong to a special, trading domain. The latter allows users to access imported objects that are not available in their private domains