Extending the behavioral capabilities of the object-oriented paradigm with an active model of propagation

摘要

Object-oriented design techniques have begun to play a critical role in increasing productivity, assuring correctness, and modeling both the structure and behavior of applications. However, while most object-oriented models support intra-class behavior definition through encapsulation, inter-class relationships and behavior are supported in only a limited sense, i.e., within ISA or inheritance hierarchies. This is a serious draw-back when attempting to model advanced applications such as software-development environments (SDEs) and CAD/CAM. In order to model these critical inter-class relationships and behavior, our goal is to incorporate propagation actions into an object-oriented data model at the design-phase level. This results in increased accuracy in the modeling of information, more complete specification of system behavior, elimination of some side effects, and decreased application coding errors. To meet this goal, this paper presents the active model of propagation (AMP) which supports the specification of inter-class relationships during the design phase to permit system enforced propagation.