The Entity System: distribution and persistence

Abstract

The Entity System, a model for large-scale storage and manipulation of data using object-based programming techniques, is described. The model uses persistence to store arbitrarily complex objects with minimal programming effort and supports smooth evolution of object types and representations. The design and implementation of a distributed Entity System that allows location-independent access to objects by client programs on a network are described. The architecture of the system is designed to scale to networks and object bases of global proportions.<>