40 Years of Computing at Newcastle

Department Technical Report Series No. 571

Object-Oriented Approach to State Restoration by Reversion in Fault Tolerant Systems

N.V. Tikhomirova, I.V. Shturtz and A.B. Romanovsky

University of Newcastle upon Tyne. 1997.

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to providing object state restoration in fault tolerant (FT) object-oriented (OO) computing systems by means of a reversion strategy. The unit of reversion is an object method. Two primitives are introduced that are used for creating a reverse-recoverable (RR) object: state saving primitive save and state restoring primitive restore. Reverse operations are processed in the order specified by a third primitive, undo. It is demonstrated how the approach suggested can be generalised to build a hierarchy of RR objects in the case of inheritance. The implementation of the approach is described for both the entire system and a separate object. The requirements for reverse operations are analysed. Finally, preferable areas of reversion applicability are discussed.

Department Technical Report Series - 1997
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Technical Report Abstract No. 571, 30 June 1997