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DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES AND 
OPERATING SYSTEMS SEMINAR

                    -Monday, April 10, 1989

Mr.  Sanjay  Radia,  graduate  student,  Department  of
Computer Science, University of Waterloo, will speak on
"A Naming Model".

TIME:                 1:30 PM

ROOM:              DC 1302

ABSTRACT

Names  are  widely  used  in  computer systems. Saltzer
(1978)  developed  an  informal  naming  model which is
widely  referenced; in his conclusion he stated ``there
should  be  a more organized approach to the subject''.
Watson (1981) made a similar statement.

In  this talk we present a naming model that provides a
uniform  framework for understanding how names are used
to  refer to entities in computer systems.  The salient
parts  of  the  model are: contexts which are functions
that maps a name to an entity, the bind operation which
creates a name-entity mapping in a context, the resolve
operations  which  maps  a  name  to  an entity using a
context,  and closure mechanisms which are the implicit
rules   used  to  select  a  context  for  binding  and
resolving names.

The  model  can  be  used  to define the semantics of a
naming  scheme. Given a description of a naming scheme,
the  naming model defines the semantics of the bind and
resolve  operations,  and  hence of a name. Some common
naming  schemes  in  operating  systems and programming
languages are described using the model.

Several tradeoffs are involved in selecting the time at
which  the  naming operations are performed; we examine
these using examples from computer systems.