The Sixth International Workshop on Persistent Object Systems was held
at Les Mazets des Roches near Tarascon, Provence in southern France from
the fifth to the ninth of September 1994. The attractive context and
autumn warmth greeted the 53 participants from 12 countries spread over
five continents. Persistent object systems continue to grow in
importance. Almost all significant uses of computers to support human
endeavours depend on long-lived and large-scale systems. As expectations
and ambitions rise so the sophistication of the systems we attempt to
build also rises. The quality and integrity of the systems and their
feasibility for supporting large groups of co-operating people depends
on their technical founda- tion. Persistent object systems are being
developed which provide a more robust and yet simpler foundation for
these persistent applications. The workshop followed the tradition of
the previous workshops in the series, focusing on the design,
implementation and use of persistent object systems in particular and
persistent systems in general. There were clear signs that this line of
research is maturing, as engineering issues were discussed with the aid
of evidence from operational systems. The work presented covered the
complete range of database facilities: transactions, concurrency,
distribution, integrity and schema modifica- tion. There were examples
of very large scale use, one involving tens of terabytes of data.
Language issues, particularly the provision of reflection, continued to
be important.