METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING DYNAMIC INVOCATION OF APPLICATIONS IN A DISTRIBUTED HETEROGENEOUS ENVIRONMENT

摘要

A method and apparatus providing for the interaction of processes in an object-oriented manner by which a system manages "classes" of data instances and applications rather than managing the data itself. The names of classes may be stored in a data base which also contains other information about the classes, such as certain common attributes of applications or instances which are supported by the classes. Applications can remotely invoke other applications by sending messages with parameters. Using the message names, as well as information about the classes of certain parameters and certain preference information, a reference to a specific method is selected from the data base. That method will perform the operation specified in the message. Other information in the data base is then used to locate and execute the actual code to implement the referenced method.