Orthogonal Persistence Revisited

TL;DR

This paper reviews the concept of orthogonal persistence in programming languages, highlighting its historical importance, recent resurgence in modern systems, and potential future applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of orthogonal persistence, connecting past principles with current implementations and future prospects.

Findings

Orthogonal persistence is re-emerging in modern systems.

The concept supports uniform treatment of objects regardless of type or lifespan.

Historical principles of orthogonal persistence remain relevant today.

Abstract

The social and economic importance of large bodies of programs and data that are potentially long-lived has attracted much attention in the commercial and research communities. Here we concentrate on a set of methodologies and technologies called persistent programming. In particular we review programming language support for the concept of orthogonal persistence, a technique for the uniform treatment of objects irrespective of their types or longevity. While research in persistent programming has become unfashionable, we show how the concept is beginning to appear as a major component of modern systems. We relate these attempts to the original principles of orthogonal persistence and give a few hints about how the concept may be utilised in the future.