Importance

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Abstract

An operating system which is particularly adapted to heterogenous distributed systems. Entities available to a process running in the operating system are provided by services. Each service models its entity as a set of files. The entity is controlled by performing operations on the set of files provided by the entity. Services other than those provided by the operating system all employ the same protocol specifying operations on files. The only requirement placed on a service by the operating system is that it be able to accept and respond to messages employing the protocol. The files are named, and the operating system provides a plurality of name spaces, relates each process to one of the name spaces, and permits any process to modify its name space or to create a new name space. Services are disclosed which provide each process using the service with its own set of the service's files and which provide files belonging to one process's namespace to another process executing on a different processor.

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First Claim