Journal of Object Technology, 6(8), 2007

Authors: Torbjörn Ekman, Peter Mechlenborg, Ulrik Pagh Schultz

Abstract

 

Virtual machines raise the abstraction level of the execution environment at the cost of restricting the set of supported languages. Moreover, the ability of a language implementation to integrate with other languages hosted on the same virtual machine typically constrains the features of the language. In this paper, we present a highly flexible yet efficient approach to hosting multiple programming languages on an objectoriented virtual machine. Our approach is based on extending the interface of each class with language-specific wrapper methods, offering each language a tailored view of a given class. This approach can be deployed both on a statically typed virtual machine, such as the JVM, and on a dynamic virtual machine, such as a Smalltalk virtual machine.

We have implemented our approach to language interoperability on top of a prototype virtual machine for embedded systems based on the Smalltalk object model, which provides interoperability for embedded versions of the Smalltalk, Java, and BETA programming languages.

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BIBTEX:

          
@article{FlexibleLanguageInteroperability,
 author = "Torbj{\"o}rn Ekman and Meter Mechlenborg and Ulrik Pagh Schultz",
  title= "{Flexible Language Interoperability}",
  journal = "{Journal of Object Technology}",
  volume = "6",
  number = "8",
  year= {2007},
}