wlrush@water.waterloo.edu (Wenchantress Wench Wendall) (04/08/89)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES AND
OPERATING SYSTEMS SEMINAR
-Monday, April 10, 1989
Mr. Sanjay Radia, graduate student, Department of
Computer Science, University of Waterloo, will speak on
"A Naming Model".
TIME: 1:30 PM
ROOM: DC 1302
ABSTRACT
Names are widely used in computer systems. Saltzer
(1978) developed an informal naming model which is
widely referenced; in his conclusion he stated ``there
should be a more organized approach to the subject''.
Watson (1981) made a similar statement.
In this talk we present a naming model that provides a
uniform framework for understanding how names are used
to refer to entities in computer systems. The salient
parts of the model are: contexts which are functions
that maps a name to an entity, the bind operation which
creates a name-entity mapping in a context, the resolve
operations which maps a name to an entity using a
context, and closure mechanisms which are the implicit
rules used to select a context for binding and
resolving names.
The model can be used to define the semantics of a
naming scheme. Given a description of a naming scheme,
the naming model defines the semantics of the bind and
resolve operations, and hence of a name. Some common
naming schemes in operating systems and programming
languages are described using the model.
Several tradeoffs are involved in selecting the time at
which the naming operations are performed; we examine
these using examples from computer systems.