An open system architecture for a persistent object store

The authors describe an open system architecture for a persistent object store which is able to support a disparate range of persistent programming languages and their individual requirements. The ideal architecture would combine the flexibility and safety of a highly modular system with the performance of a tuned production system. The authors present an approach towards the ideal by realising part of the interface to the persistent object store in terms of conventions. This permits the costly use of interfaces to be circumvented on the basis of trust. The persistent object store may be used to construct programming language specific instances of the open architecture. To date the open architecture has been used to implement the persistent programming language Napier88, the functional programming language STAPLE, the object-oriented database programming language Galileo and the typeful programming language Quest.< >