Activities in Object Bases

Objects are collected into an object base because of a presumed need for cooperation among them. In classical object bases the cooperation is based on synchronous, preplanned message exchange. Many of the modern application scenarios such as industrial and oce automation with their high volume of concurrent, interleaved, and iterative actions defy preplanning and require the support of a highly dynamic relationships among the objects. It is the central hypothesis of this paper that the dynamics within such an object base is best covered by the metaphor of communications protocol taken from the telecommunications world. Active objects with their individual threads-of-control establish temporary communication links via a medium which we refer to as activities. Active objects and activity cooperate via a protocol. The main benet of such an approach is a clear separation of object-local and cooperative aspects of a common task. The paper augments an existing strongly-typed object-orient...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: RULES
• Authors: Peter C. Lockemann, Hans-Dirk Walter
• Keywords: Active Objects, Database, Event Processing Model, Object Base, RULES 1993