Parametric polymorphism in an object-oriented distributed computing programming environment

Genericity, the ability to provide for and encourage the writing of generic code, has been a highly desired characteristic of programming environments for a long time. In particular, parametric polymorphism supports writing code that is generic across types that have no family relationship, and provides greater flexibility in programming, greater opportunity for code reuse and reduced code, and more expressive power. Several new and existing technologies are adding or implementing this form of generic programming. Unfortunately for many programmers, they cannot use this programming paradigm in their object-oriented distributed computing programming environments.; Parametric polymorphism has become an integral part of many modern programming languages, including most notably C++ as C++ Templates. Yet, the ability to use parametric polymorphism has not made the transition from single environment programming languages to object-oriented distributed computing programming environments. Those who are accustomed to the parametric polymorphism paradigm may find the distributed computing programming environment more foreign because they cannot use an important programming feature they depend on. Many object-oriented distributed computing programming environments incorporate programming languages that implement this paradigm, but the ability to use parametric polymorphism and its many advantages has not been incorporated.; This research chooses an appropriate object-oriented distributed computing programming environment, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), to incorporate and implement the parametric polymorphism paradigm. The research includes a good design and implementation of parametric polymorphism. It provides a solution in which parametric polymorphism is an integral feature of the programming environment, rather than just class wrappers for programming languages that already support parametric polymorphism. It defines and describes the interaction between programming languages that support parametric polymorphism and programming languages that do not. This research also includes testing and evaluation in which the effect on performance, the choices among alternatives, and the conceptual costs of adding this technology will be evaluated.