Service-Oriented Programming – Supporting Emerging Variations of Object-Oriented Programming

Much of the object-oriented software produced today is written in programming languages in which clients request services from specific objects. But important areas of software development, like aspect-oriented, pervasive, service-oriented, grid, and event-driven, require a more flexible model for how services are found. We describe here a re-interpretation of familiar object-oriented concepts that enables object-oriented software to be much less dependent on the structure of the implementations of the services that they call. This new interpretation of the concepts of object, reference, and method call is intentionally structured to extend the existing interpretation, allowing existing software to be carried forward compatibly and even to exploit some of the flexibility it introduces. We outline important features of a new programming language, Continuum, under development by the Software Structure Group at Trinity College Dublin, that is intended to more directly address needs of these communitie