Application layer software fault tolerance for distributed object-oriented systems

A technique for software fault-tolerance on a distributed object-oriented system is presented. It provides software fault tolerance as well as resilience to the object failures. The technique is an extension of the active object replication schemes. Using the property of encapsulation, a group of objects with multiple implementations sharing a common interface can be treated as if they are a group of replicated objects. The resilience from hardware failures is achieved by the replication of computation. The software fault tolerance is attained by the design diversity. The application layer implementation of the technique is discussed.