Open to suggestions: On adaptable, Distributed Application Support Architectures

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the requirements that will be placed on future operating system architectures and conclude that most application areas will need different support from the operating system. What is needed for these applications is an operating system environment which can easily be adapted to application-specific needs. To address this problem we propose structuring the operating system as a collection of objects which allows the customization of the behaviour of application-level objects at run-time. This is achieved by using a metalevel architecture which allows the adaption of objects to application-specific needs dynamically. We illustrate our proposal using real-time environments as an example.