Semantics for parameter passing in a type-complete persistent RPC

Current RPC mechanisms for persistent languages are either pass by reference-in which case they do not scale-or pass by copy-in which case they duplicate objects and destroy sharing relationships. In this paper we argue that to build very large distributed persistent applications a compromise between these two mechanisms is needed. The ultimate goal of our research is to build a scalable persistent RPC while still maintaining object sharing type safety, type completeness and semantics that are readily understood by application programmers.