Object management in a persistent smalltalk system
Andrew David Straw, Fred Mellender, Steve Riegel · Software Practice and Experience · 1989
Abstract The main goal of the Alltalk project is to provide transparent database support to the Smalltalk programmer. As a first step towards this goal, the current version of Alltalk extends Smalltalk‐80 by providing persistence to Smalltalk objects without adding a database sublanguage, new language syntax, classes or methods. This paper describes the implementation of object management in Alltalk, including database layout, database access methods, in‐memory object management and high‐level interface from the interpreter. It also discusses how the object manager is integrated in a unique way with the operations of the Alltalk garbage collector and interpreter.