Providing orthogonal persistence to C++ using forced inheritance

Orthogonal persistence, a property that any object can be made to persist independent of its type, is an important requirement of a persistent language. We present a new technique called forced inheritance for providing the orthogonal persistence to C++. In this technique, properties that make objects persist are attached as a header to an object or a value of any type that is desired to persist. Attaching the header gives the effect of inheriting these properties from a virtual persistent root class regardless of its type. This technique provides orthogonal persistence since attaching the header to an object can be done for any object. It also provides portability since it does not extend the language. The new, approach not only has advantages over existing ones, but also can be efficiently implemented.<
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