Re: Persistence Pros and Cons

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 10:57 +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Can you explain how an application can serialize its state, including
> capabilities it holds, given that capabilities are "not representable as
> bits"?

Short answer: it cannot. This is true in the same way that Linux-based
openoffice cannot store its file descriptors.

Longer answer: it is possible to build a privileged (de)serializer, that
can be handed a capability to the root of an object graph and will
serialize that graph in such a way that it can later be deserialized.

The challenge in the graph serializer is to make sure that it does not
exceed the authority of the user. The challenge from the client
perspective is what to do about any "out" capabilities that exit the
graph, where the client doesn't have authority to serialize those
capabilities.

shap