Methods and apparatus for providing an extensible set of auxiliary

Abstract

An extensible set of auxiliary services for objects in an object-oriented system. Every object in an object-oriented system is implemented by an associated object manager. Each object manager in the present invention has an associated object manager identifier that identifies the object manager. Each object manager in the system can optionally provide various auxiliary services for objects that the object manager implements. These auxiliary services are objects implemented by the object manager itself, or by another object manager. For a particular type of auxiliary service, different object managers may provide different auxiliary services. For example, two object managers may provide two different freeze-melt services. For each type of auxiliary service type, there is a well-known context in which auxiliary services of that type are associated with names. For each type of auxiliary service, there is also a well-known function that transforms an object manager identifier into a name. When a client of an object needs to access an auxiliary service for an object, the client first invokes an operation within the object that provides the object manager identifier for the object manager that manages the object. The client then passes the object manager identifier to the well-known function for the desired type of auxiliary service that transforms the object manager identifier into a name. The client resolves the transformed name within a well-known context for the type of auxiliary service desired to obtain a representation of the desired auxiliary service.