Demand-driven object loading

[Randy Shoup]

All --

  We are looking into implementing a demand-driven approach to loading
persistent objects in omniORB.  We would like to be able to periodically
"age" objects out of a server-side cache, but have references to those
objects remain valid.  When an unloaded object received a request, it
would be loaded from a persistent store.  In looking through the
maillist archives, I found the following references, where this issue
was discussed:

http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/archives/1997-Jun/0025.html
http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/archives/1997-Jun/0027.html

  In thinking about the issues, we were concerned that the forwarding
approach would require us to have a potentially very large number of
active objects -- at least a reDirector for each available object.  We
are leaning toward the objectLoader approach, most particularly because
it would allow us to control/minimize the number of active objects in
the system at any one time.  Has anyone else done anything like this? 
Has anyone resolved these issues differently?

Thanks very much,
-- Randy
_________________________________________________________________  
Randy Shoup                                     (415)569-3682  
Senior Software Developer                       rshoup@tumbleweed.com  
Tumbleweed Software Corporation