In an orthogonally persistent programming system the longevity of data is independent of its other attributes. The advantages of persistence may be seen primarily in the areas of data modelling and protection resulting from simpler semantics and reduced complexity. These have been verified by the first implementations of persistent languages, typically consisting of a persistent store, a run-time system and a compiler that produces programs that may access and manipulate the persistent environment. This thesis demonstrates that persistence can deliver many further benefits to the programming process when applied to software construction and execution. To support the thesis, a persistent environment has been extended with all the components necessary to support program construction and execution entirely within the persistent environment. This is the first known example of a strongly-typed integrated persistent programming environment. The keystone of this work is the construction of ...

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Reflective systems allow their own structures to be altered from within. Here we are concerned with a style of reflection, called linguistic reflection, which is the ability of a running program to generate new program fragments and to integrate these into its own execution. In particular we describe how this kind of reflection may be provided in the compiler-based, strongly typed object-oriented programming language Java. The advantages of the programming technique include attaining high levels of genericity and accommodating system evolution. These advantages are illustrated by an example taken from persistent programming which shows how linguistic reflection allows functionality (program code) to be generated on demand (Just-In-Time) from a generic specification and integrated into the evolving running program. The technique is evaluated against alternative implementation approaches with respect to efficiency, safety and ease of use.