Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.answers,news.answers Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.starnet.net!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!news From: Bob Hathaway Subject: Comp.Object FAQ Version 1.0.9 (04-02) Part 7/13 X-Nntp-Posting-Host: ford.uchicago.edu Message-ID: Followup-To: comp.object Summary: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List and Available Systems For Object-Oriented Technology Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Organization: Geodesic Systems References: Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 04:15:14 GMT Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Lines: 1516 Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.object:47073 comp.answers:18007 news.answers:68823 Archive-name: object-faq/part7 Last-Modified: 04/02/96 Version: 1.0.9 Objectivity/DB is resold by Digital Equipment Corporation as DEC Object/DB, providing a multi-billion-dollar second source vendor. Over 50,000 end users are licensed in production use, with applications including real-time telecommunications, aerospace, defense, case, CAD/CAM, CIM, manufacturing, oil & gas, process control, transportation, multi-media, case, document management, financial analysis, and corporate information management. Platform support includes all Sun, all DEC (including VMS, alpha, OSF-1), HP/9000 series (both 68xxx and PA-RISC), IBM RS/6000, NCR 3300, SGI, Windows 3.1, and Windows NT. On Schema Evolution (from original survey): In the just-released Version 2.0 (shipping Oct 92), schema evolution is supported via dynamic versioning of type-defining objects [ie. class versions -- SMC], and via a step-by-step approach that allows conversion of instance data via user-provided conversion methods. Also, a full dynamic type manager interface is available for doing fancier things. Objectivity, Inc. 301B East Evelyn Avenue Mountain View, CA 94041-1530 U.S.A. Voice: (415) 254-7100 Fax: (415) 254-7171 Toll Free: 1-800-676-6259 1-800-SOS-OBJY Email: info@objy.com Ftp: ftp.objy.com Web: http://www.objectivity.com Objectivity maintains regional offices in Los Angeles, CA; Burlington, MA; Iselin, New Jersey. Objectivity-Europe Beijerscheweg 28a 2821 NG Stolwijk The Netherlands Voice: +31 1820 50506 Fax: +31 1820 12362 Rick ter Horst - horst@objy.com Objectivity - Europe Socratesstraat 22 6836 GG ARNHEM The Netherlands Voice: +31 85 235 907 Fax: +31 85 235 541 Henk Nijenhuis - henk@objy.com Additional representatives in Ireland, France, Germany Sweden, United Kingdom, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Taiwan, Japna, Hong Kong > ObjectStore Product Description ObjectStore[TM] is a high performance ODBMS designed for ease of use in development of sophisticated applications using object-oriented development techniques. It offers a tightly-integrated language interface to a complete set of traditional DBMS features including persistence, transaction management (concurrency control and recovery), distributed access, associative queries over large amounts of data, and database administration utilities. ObjectStore's data management facilities combined with popular development tools create a high productivity development environment for implementing object-oriented applications. Key Features: - Transparent interface designed for popular C and C++ programming environments. - Concurrent access to large amounts of persistent data. - Distribution of objects over networks using a variety of popular network protocols. - Access to persistent data at the same speed as transient data. - Extensible data modeling capabilities for applications requiring complex data structures. - Easy migration path for existing C and C++ applications. - Class libraries for version and configuration management. - Class libraries for managing collections of objects. - A fully distributed (multi-server/multi-database) ad hoc query capability. - An interactive Browser to inspect objects and object descriptions. - Interoperable with ObjectStore servers running on other operating systems and hardware environments. - Complete schema evolution for an application's metadata and existing object instances. - Full online backup for continuous processing environments. - Meta object protocol with programmatic access to schema information. - Dynamic Type creation for extending existing class definitions during program execution. System View ObjectStore supports cooperative access through its flexible client/server software architecture, which allows users to make the take advantage of the computational power that exists on the desktop. ObjectStore's client/server implementation allows one server to support many client workstations, each workstation to simultaneously access multiple databases on many servers, and a server to be resident on the same machine as a client. ObjectStore's distributed architecture supports several network environments for interoperability among popular workstations and PC's and includes support for TCP/IP, Novell IPX/SPX, other popular network protocols. Application Interface Access to ObjectStore is provided through a library based application interface compatible with popular C and C++ compilers and programming environments. The ObjectStore application interface provides support for C++ compilers -- such as those from workstation suppliers -- and development environments from independent software vendors such as Visual C++ from Microsoft, ObjectCenter from CenterLine Software, Inc. and Energize from Lucid, Inc. The application interface provides powerful high-level function calls which enable the programmer to create multi-user application which share large amounts of data. These functions include: - Relationship Management - Version Management - Collection Management - Storage Management - Associative Queries - Object Iteration - Transaction Management - Index Management - Clustering Applications developed using ObjectStore library calls are source-level compatible with ObjectStore applications developed for other operating systems on other hardware platforms. Platforms ObjectStore is available on the following major platforms: Unix Workstation Platforms - DEC MIPS Ultrix - HP 700 Series HP-UX - HP 800 Series HP-UX - IBM RS/6000 AIX - NCR 3000 - Olivetti LSX-50xx SVR4 - Silicon Graphics IRIX 5.x - SunSoft Intel Solaris 2 - SunSoft SPARC Solaris 1 SunOS 4 - SunSoft SPARC Solaris 2 SunOS 5 - Univel UnixWare PC Platforms - Windows 3.1 (Win32s) - Windows NT (Intel) - OS/2 Release 2.0 and 2.1 - Novell Netware Release 3.1 and 4.0 (server only) The Company Object Design, Inc. 25 Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 U.S.A. Voice: 1-800-962-9620 (617) 674-5179 (617) 674-5000 Fax: (617) 674-5010 Email: info@odi.com Web: http://www.odi.com Ftp: ftp.odi.com Offices in Asia Pacific, Europe and throughout the U.S.. Full contact information available through their web page. The German user group (OS_UG) has a web site: http://www.informatik.th-darmstadt.de/OS_UG > ONTOS [formerly VBase] (Now ONTOS, Inc. formerly Ontologic) Entry on schema evolution only: *Ontos provides schema evolution. It allows any class to be modified. *The major drawback is that data does not migrate ie., instances are *not modified to adopt to the new class definition. So schema changes *can be done only on classes that do not contain instances and do not *have sub classes that contain instances. *[h.subramanian@trl.OZ.AU] *As a system for experiments, we are currently using ONTOS from *Ontologic Inc. Unfortunately, there is no transparent concept of *schema evolution for populated database. Thus, we still investigate *how it works. ONTOS, Inc. provides object-oriented products and services that enable users to integrate, distribute, and manage information across the enterprise. Product Overview: The ONTOS Virtual Information Architecture (ONTOS VIA) is a strategy for integrating an organization's disparate information resources. It includes a set of products for developing and deploying distributed, network-based applications and for accessing information stored in a variety of formats. ONTOS VIA allows organizations to take advantage of new technologies while preserving existing technology investments. The products that make up ONTOS VIA include ONTOS DB, a fully distributed Component Object Database and ONTOS Object Integration Server (ONTOS OIS), which provides object access to relational and mainframe databases. ONTOS products are available on UNIX and Microsoft operating environments. ONTOS, Inc. 900 Chelmsford St. Lowell, MA 01851 U.S.A. Voice: (508) 323-8000 Fax: (503) 323-8101 Email: info@ontos.com support@ontos.com Web: http://www.ontos.com > Odapter/OpenODB (Hewlett-Packard) Odapter is HP's new object/relational adapter which enables object-oriented developers to share a common object model stored in the ORACLE7 relational database management system (RDBMS). Odapter is also available with HP's ALLBASE/SQL RDBMS. The combination of Odapter and ALLBASE/SQL is called OpenODB. Odapter Technical Data Object/Relational Adapter A Productivity Tool for Scalable Object-Oriented Applications Odapter is a tool for developers writing scalable object-oriented applications requiring the integration of new objects and legacy information. Odapter is valuable because it: * accelerates application development * reduces the cost of keeping applications current * enables applications to scale Odapter delivers the productivity of object technology while adhering to your data management standards. Consider Odapter if you need to be able to do one or more of the following: * develop object-oriented applications and store objects in a relational database * easily access legacy data and existing applications from your new system * support a large number of end-users who will be simultaneously accessing information * store large amounts of complex information The following are examples of applications well- suited for Odapter: * a customer billing application written in Smalltalk combining data stored in DB2 with new objects. (Telecommunications) * a network management application written in C using Odapter as the object manager, able to scale to millions of objects (Manufacturing) * a complex Oil and Gas industry standard model automatically generated from an Express analysis and design tool. (Oil & Gas) * a medical application using Odapter to combine heterogeneous components of patient records. (Healthcare) Odapter provides authorized access to sharable objects, including existing data and business processes. By bringing object-oriented capabilities to heterogeneous systems environments, Odapter delivers increased functionality while leveraging the stability of existing RDBMSs and legacy information. Odapter Object Model The Odapter object model is based on three key concepts - objects, types and functions. * Objects are a combination of data and behavior (functions). Figure 2 is an example of an object. * Types are dynamic templates allowing you to group together similar components or objects. * Functions define the attributes, relationships and behavior of objects. Odapter supports four types of user-defined functions: Stored functions define attributes and relationships that are stored in the database. In Figure 2, flightno is a stored function. The functions aircraft and crew are also stored functions with user-defined results. SQL-based functions allow you to access existing relational tables with Odapter's object-oriented model. In Figure 2, citypair is an SQL-based function accessing values from an existing relational table. OSQL-based functions define attributes and relationships that are derived or calculated with OSQL statements. In Figure 2, delay and depart are OSQL-based functions. Delay calculates changes in arrival and departure times based upon events that disrupt the schedule; depart handles the update of functions related to departure and transitions the flight from OnGround to InAir. External functions are a reference to code or data stored outside of Odapter. In Figure 2, cancel is an external function that executes code outside of Odapter to free up resources no longer assigned to the flight. Odapter Language The Odapter language can be combined with functions implemented in C++, Smalltalk or C. You create and manipulate objects, types and functions using Odapter's object-oriented structured query language (OSQL). OSQL is a functional language that is a semantic superset of SQL, the structured query language for relational databases. OSQL is a computationally complete language with statements allowing you to define and manipulate information in your Odapter enhanced relational database, specify authorization for individuals or groups, define transactions, embed program logic within functions, and administer the database. OSQL includes programming flow statements, such as IF/THEN/ELSE, FOR and WHILE. This procedural language allows Odapter functions to model complex behavior, simplifying your application code. By decoupling behavior from the applications, multiple applications can share information with benefits such as consistency, security and integrity. See Table 5 for a list of all OSQL statements. Odapter Object Storage Odapter objects are stored in the developer's choice of relational databases. Odapter interfaces to the underlying RDBMS through an SQL command interface. Currently, developers can choose to store their objects in ORACLE7 or HP ALLBASE/SQL. The choice of RDBMS is made when a particular database is created. The users are only limited by the number of Odapter concurrent user licenses purchased. This flexibility allows database administrators to continue using their existing administration procedures and keeps the group from having to choose yet another database management system. During the initial development of an application, developers can make rapid progress without knowledge of the underlying relational database. Optimization of the objects and how they are stored in the underlying relational database is best done during the deployment phase. Odapter Development Environments Odapter developers have a choice of development environments. Whether Smalltalk, C++ or more traditional C and C-linkable languages are used, Odapter enables object storage in a scalable and robust relational database. In fact, objects can be shared between different applications, allowing different projects to employ the best tools for the job! Odapter and Smalltalk Odapter provides Smalltalk developers with transparent access to information stored in the underlying relational database. Odapter's Smalltalk Class Builder utility automatically generates ParcPlace Smalltalk compatible classes and methods based upon an Odapter object model. The developer can select specific Odapter types and functions, resulting in a corresponding set of Smalltalk classes and methods. Once the Smalltalk schema is generated, the Smalltalk developer can transparently access the underlying relational database, as shown in Figure 3. printFlight |allFlightObjects| allFlightObject:=Flight allObjects. AllFlightObjects do: [:aFlight| Transcript show :aFlight flightno value; cr]. Figure 3 Figure 3 shows how to access the flight objects shown in Figure 2 through Smalltalk. This example retrieves all flight object identifiers and prints the flight# for each one of the flight objects. All Smalltalk classes and methods which result in the access of Odapter structures are italicized. Flight is a Smalltalk class that corresponds to the Odapter type Flight. The Smalltalk methods allObjects and flightno map to Odapter calls that access data from the relational database storage manager. Odapter and C++ For C++ developers, once the corresponding C++ model is created, Odapter provides the abilility to manage C++ objects stored in the underlying relational database, as shown in Figure 4. void printFlight() { int i; ODBType Flight ("Flight"); ODBBag allFlights=Flight.allObjects(); ODBFunc flightno("flighno"); for(i=0;i OOFILE (A.D. Software) WHAT IS OOFILE? OOFILE is a c++ framework. It can be used as a "traditional" ODBMS or can be used to access a more traditional RDBMS or record-oriented database. The current release is implemented with a Faircom c-tree Plus ISAM backend on Mac and MS Windows. There would be very little difficulty in porting this to any platform supported by Faircom, and we already have over 8 OS/compiler combinations in use (including 3 in-house). Design Goals - everything is native C++ with no (database) preprocessor required - external interfaces to enable calling from Hypercard, Smalltalk etc. - keep syntax very simple, familiar to 4GL users and not needing c++ gurus - safe syntax that makes it hard to do the wrong thing by mistake, making maximum use of c++ compiler type-checking - implement with a choice of database engines for the backend - integrate with a range of common application frameworks - provide additional classes for managing gui interfaces to help construct typical database applications, where features are not commonly part of application frameworks - use a widely available level of c++ (no RTTI, templates or exception handling) WHO IS OUR MARKET 1) c++ developers (or wannabees) wanting an embedded database for writing applications, probably working in combination with an application framework such as zApp, OWL or PowerPlant. 2) World Wide Web developers seeking a database and report-writer combination to create web pages in response to queries, searching hundreds of thousands of records (at least). BASIC PHILOSOPHY Object-oriented design is mainly about classes, not individual objects. OOFILE is similar. Most of the time you model your data in terms of classes. You do NOT declare individual objects (unlike the ODMG model). Consider a database from the user's view. They generally see collections of data and edit or interact with individual records from the collection. The user doesn't care about individual object identity, they don't create symbolic names for particular objects. These things may be important inside the database, but do not need to be exposed. SOME SIMPLE EXAMPLES Note: for more examples, including online queries, look on http://www.highway1.com.au/adsoftware/oofile.html Before venturing into database definitions, let's consider some operations on a database containing People, Job Histories and Companies. // print my address cout << People["Andy Dent"].Address; // get a separate list (iterator) of people who worked for software companies dbPeople softP( People.PrevJobs->Company->MainBusiness()=="Software" ); // for the current softP record (ie person), print the number of large companies // where they've worked, and the current company size cout << softP.Name() << "\t" << (softP.PrevJobs->Company->NumEmployees() > 100).count() << "\t" << softP.CurrentJob->Company->NumEmployees() << endl; NOTE: The () at the end of fields, as shown above, are optional for all cases except fields in relational expressions, eg: People.CurrentJob->StartDate(). DECLARING SIMPLE TABLES To define a table with a few fields, the simplest declaration would be: CLASS_TABLE(dbPeople) dbChar Name, Address; dbInt Salary; }; This defaults the size of the dbChar fields to 80 chars. To specify the size of the fields, and/or control indexing options, you need to add a constructor: CLASS_TABLE(dbPeople) dbChar Name, Address; dbInt Salary; dbPeople : Name(40, "Name", kIndexNoDups), Address(255, "Address"), Salary("Salary", kIndexed) {}; }; Note that the constructors also specify the field name strings. These are optional, but are of great benefit when writing query and report-writer logic or when constructing a database schema that should be readable by others. SOME OTHER FEATURES - Derived fields, either specified as a combination of existing fields or user-calculated - User-defined relations - keyword indexing - phonetic indexing - inbuilt report-writer RELATIONS One of the big features of an ODBMS is modelling the relationships between objects. OOFILE allows you to model relations in a pure ODBMS sense, using object identifiers, or explicitly perform runtime joins over database fields. This would be mainly used by people porting existing database structures. There are a number of syntaxes available to establish relationships, eg: dbConnect_ctree theDB; // the physical database dbAcademics Academics; // a couple of tables dbStudents Students; dbRelation Supervision("Supervision"); // a concrete relation Supervision.Names("Supervises", "is Supervised by") .Tables(Academics, Students) .Links(Academics.Supervises, Students.Boss) .JoinField(Academics.StaffNo, Students.SupervisorNo); APPLICATION FRAMEWORKS AND OOFILE GUI Integration classes are under development for zApp & PowerPlant with more frameworks to follow. A "non-intrusive" approach has been taken of providing helper classes and instructions that let you incorporate OOFILE use into an existing program. These helper classes include subclasses of the native edit fields, that store data directly into the database. Depending on your framework, other classes are added for displaying lists of records, managing multiple page input forms and similar business application functions. For Macintosh users, the popular AppMaker code generator is being enhanced to generate OOFILE applications. You will be able to go from drawing your interface to a complete working database application, without writing code. The next AppMaker and CodeWarrior CD's will contain more information and samples. STATUS The current c-tree implementation is solid and the inbuilt test data generator has been used to create databases of up to 200Mb in various configurations. The largest beta tester is operating a 270Mb+ database on a Sparc Classic. (500,000+ IP-flow objects as of mid July). Product release, including (at least) zApp and PowerPlant integrations is anticipated for September TEST PLATFORMS in-house c-tree+ v6.4B Mac - Symantec c++ v7.0.4 - CodeWarrior 6.1 MS Windows - Borland c++ v4.5p3 SunOS 4.3 - g++ v2.6.3 CONTACT Andy Dent A.D. Software 94 Bermuda Drive Ballajura, Western Australia 6066 Phone/Fax +61-9-249-2719 eWorld: DentA CompuServe: 100033,3241 Internet: dent@highway1.com.au ftp://ftp.highway1.com.au/pub/adsoftware/ http://www.highway1.com.au/adsoftware/ MAINTENANCE Priority fixes/consulting rate (drop-everything mode) $60/hour Patches to each version - free. Major upgrades - 30% per seat. or Annual Maintenance, regardless of number of upgrades - 40% per seat UPGRADES Upgrading between database and report-writer options is at the cost difference. Changing from one GUI to another is 50%. If you decide to later reactive the original, it's also at 50% (ie: net result same as buying the 2nd GUI outright). Note: if later GUI kits are at different prices, exchange rules will vary to suit. SITE LICENSING (Excluding bundled c-tree) by negotiation for large sites. or 40% off 2nd and subsequent copies Andy Dent, Product Architect, A.D. Software, Western Australia OOFILE - "the cross-platform OODBMS that speaks c++" ftp://ftp.highway1.com.au/pub/adsoftware/ http://www.highway1.com.au/adsoftware/ > Phyla Mainstay produce Phyla, an end-user, OODB for PCs. Includes a drag-and-drop interface and diagrams to represent objects and their relationships. Runs under Macintosh System. Listed at $500. Mainstay 591 A Constitution Avenue Camarillo, CA 93012 U.S.A. Voice: (805)484-9400 1-800-484-9817 Code 6276 Email: mainstay1@aol.com > POET (Poet Software) POET is a full-featured C++ ODBMS with support for, schema versioning, check-in/check-out, online backup and object queries with OQL. Workbenches are included for developers and administrators. POET is available for nearly all platforms. OLE is supported and an ODBC driver is available. A single user version is sold for around $499, and a multi-user user for mixed networks is also available. C++ Language Support o tight semantic integration with C++ o any C++ object or structure can be made persistent by adding the persistent keyword o storing and reading a C++ object does not change its state or behavior o full support for C++ encapsulation, object identity, inheritance, and polymorphy o C++ pointers and references are automatically converted to database references when storing objects o database references are automatically converted to C++ pointers and references when reading objects o all database definition is done through a small extension to C++ declaration syntax NOTE: Visual Basic support with Sourcecraft. Database Functionality navigation, queries, sorting, indexes, single-user operation, multi-user operation using client/server architecture, flexible locking for objects and sets, nested transactions, watch & notify for objects and sets, event handling, database size limited only by hard disk size C++ Language Extensions persistence, indexes, transient data elements in persistent classes, sets, dependent objects, templates PTXX schema compiler automatically converts extended C++ class declarations into ANSI 2.0 code, registers classes in the class dictionary, provides class versioning Predefined C++ Classes date, time, strings, and BLOBS (binary large objects) Portability all platforms are source-code compatible, any POET database may be read by any computer full support for heterogeneous networks