Importance

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Abstract

A software system uses virtual functions to control communication between independent software modules configured in an architecture which includes a parent process and one or more independent child processes. Communication is established by the parent process which creates, loads and unloads both a child process and an object that describes the functions that are accessed by the child process. The parent process creates and loads the child process, then passes a pointer which designates the object to the child process. The child process completes a communication path by creating an object and granting access to the object to the parent process by passing a pointer designating the object to the parent process. A child process is associated to both objects created by the child process and to a virtual table of pointers which designate the objects. The parent process controls memory allocation so that the child process can be unloaded from memory while the objects created by the child process and the virtual table associated to the child process are retained. In this manner, a software module is implemented as a loadable child process which is independent from other software modules.

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First Claim