METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING PEER OWNERSHIP OF SHARED OBJECTS

A method and apparatus for providing peer ownership of shared objects. In the invention, shared objects are implemented as a shell object with shared object state stored in shared memory. Each process that shares the object is granted a shell object within their process space which points to the object state in shared memory. All processes share equal access to the shared object, with no single process determining the lifetime of the shared object. The shutdown of any single process results in the termination of that process's respective shell object, without the necessary termination of the shared object state in shared memory. There is therefore no shutdown problem. Further, performance is enhanced because all processes access the shared object state in shared memory in what is essentially an in-process call. In an embodiment of the invention, a peer ownership manager acts as the object server for all shared objects whose object state resides in shared memory. A global table is maintained within the peer ownership manager which contains the shared memory offset location of each object's state referenced by the GID (global identifier number) of the object. Also, for each process, a shell table is maintained in which existing shell objects for a given process are referenced by the offset value for the object's state in shared memory. Methods are provided for supporting object webs in shared memory, and for putting dynamically sized data and standard non-peer objects into shared objects in shared memory.