Method and apparatus for defining the scope for searches for object factories

摘要

A method and apparatus for controlling a scope of location for a FactoryFinder object used by a program to find a factory object which is used to create another object in an object-oriented system. The scope of location may be a specific machine, all machines within a work group, all object server processes running under a particular operating system, etc. An abstract location interface is provided which is subclassed to provide a location object. The location object provides methods for returning a list of servers, for returning a boolean value of TRUE or FALSE for a specific server, and for creating a new location object and registering servers that result from an intersection/union of the servers registered with the current location and another location. <IMAGE>