Method and system for providing a group of parallel resources as a proxy for a single shared resource

The invention relates generally to a method and system for providing shared resources, and, more specifically, to a method and system for providing a group of parallel resources as a proxy for a single shared resource. A method and system for providing a group of parallel resources as a proxy for a single shared resource is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a resource grouping facility ("the facility") is incorporated in a "non-global" operating system. A non-global operating system is an operating system that is unable to respond correctly to a request to allocate a global resource of a particular type, such as a memory block, that can be accessed by every program executing in conjunction with the operating system. Instead, a non-global operating system allocates a putatively global resource that may not be accessed by every program executing in conjunction with the non-global operating system. When the facility detects that a transferer program is attempting to share a putatively global resource allocated by the operating system with a transferee program, the facility allocates a proxy resource that is accessible to the transferee. The facility may also allocate one or more intermediate resources accessible to other programs. The facility tracks the putatively global resource and all of the proxy resources as a proxy group. In a preferred embodiment, the facility also copies characteristics of the putatively global resource to the proxy resources. For example, where the putatively global resource and the proxy resources are memory blocks, the facility preferably copies the contents of the putatively global memory block to the proxy memory blocks. When the facility detects that a program is attempting to deallocate a member of the proxy group, that is, a putatively global resource or one of its proxies, the facility preferably deallocates each member of the proxy group.