AVANCE1 is an integrated application development and run-time system. It provides facilities for programming with shared and persistent objects, transactions and processes. The architecture is designed with decentralization in mind by having a large object identifier space and a remote procedure call interface to objects. Emphasis in this paper is on the programming language PAL and its relation with the underlying virtual machine.

The design of an office information system (OIS) application development environment prototype, OPAL, is outlined.OPAL is based on an object management approach.The central concept is the packet, which is the principal data and action structuring device.The main ideas in OPAL are described, including novel data types, partitioned work spaces, object version management, multiple property inheritance, and incremental application development.A scheme for naming objects is proposed and discussed.There are basically two large advantages to such a scheme--a very practical shorthand for referring to objects and a means for structuring information according to criteria not represented in the objects themselves.The latter property also supports viewing objects in different roles.Furthermore, the scheme is used to structure the whole object management system.