Re: [Nautilus-list] Refs & Leases ...

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs noisehavoc org>]

begin  Michael Meeks quotation:
> 
> Hi Ian,
> 
> On Mon, 21 May 2001, Ian McKellar wrote:
> > people have talked about refcounting based on refs that expire after a
> > short period of time. I think they were called leases. 
>  
>         As far as I am aware, the prospect of leases is not attractive for
> desktop component software for several reasons:
> 
>         * Total interface re-design 
> 
>         * Horribly inapplicable to in proc case => need 2 lifecycle
>         management systems.
> 
>         * Inefficient for lightweight components wrt. memory use    
> 
>         * Sometimes erroneously destroys valuable components & thus data.
> 
>         Leases are good for some things, but simple as they sound, I don't
> think they solve our problems, still I havn't contemplated leases much so
> I'd appreciate input from anyone on:

Most component models tht use leases for life cycle management make
them look just like normal refs to the user, and renew them
automatically in the runtime. Ian suggests doing this at the library
level, many systems do it even lower down, at the IDL compiler level
or equivalent.

The other approach to distributed life cycle management I've seen is
to punt the whole issue and not even have a concept of object
references, as SOAP does.
 
Regards,

Maciej