Re: [ecf-dev] Pass by reference semantics

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/8/2015 12:20 PM, Timothy Vogel wrote:

I am using the r_osgi provider for remote services.  One of the service characteristics is passByValue.  Is pass by reference an option with this or with any provider? 

passByReference is an option, but of course the provider must support it.   None of the existing providers that I know of support passByReference.  

Are there any recommended patterns for implementing roll-your-own pass by reference if it is not supported?

With ECF, it is of course possible to roll-your-own passByReference provider.  

The most ubiquitous technology that I know of that does pass by reference is Java RMI, which has quite a few other problems (some related to pass-by-reference) that would prevent me from recommending it as the technical basis of a RS provider.   I'm sure others are aware of other pass-by-reference systems and so hopefully they will speak up.

One thing to say:  from my chair the notion of pass-by-reference itself is controversial within distributed systems design and development.   My interpretation is that some feel that because of the inherent problems of reliability/failure detection, distributed garbage collection, distributed consensus, and other things that pass-by-reference requires/introduces, it doesn't make for a great basis for reliable distributed applications.

Scott