Re: Object Reference counting idea.

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On 10 Oct 2000, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> Suppose you have a server [S] and two clients, [A] and [B]. [A] holds
> a reference for <s>, an object implemented in the [S] server. Now [B]
> calls a method of [A] which wants to return <s>. Per the refcounting
> rules, [A] has to ref <s> before returning it. [B] now owns the new
> ref. However, how does [S] know that? We couldn't figure out a way
> that doesn't require extra round-trips to [S] from [A] or [B] or
> both. If [S] is on a remote system, and [A] and [B] are in different
> processes on the same system, this would be a serious performance
> problem.

The main problem is that the idea of "owning" a refcount really conflicts
with the whole idea of distributed computing.

-- Elliot
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