subraman@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Ramesh Subramanian) (05/09/91)
I am very new to the field of OO systems, and have the following questions regarding OODBs. They are probably very naive to most OO experts. I would appreciate any answer. 1. What exactly are `views' as related to OODBSs ? In relational DBs, views are relations specified by the user at run time, or earlier, and whose tuples are made up of attributes from a combination of existing relations. How can one create a view in an OODB ? Will it be a new object which has the properties (attributes) of a combination of objects ? Is it possible to specify these views during run time ? Is there a need for specifying views at all, in OODBs? 2. How inherent are `rules' to OO systems ? Some systems speciifically provide a `rule' object whose instances are rules. Such systems also have an implicit `rule system' which takes care of rule processing (resolution, etc.) [e.g. Intellicorp's KEE] Other systems do not explicitly mention rules. Does it mean that rules as objects, and rule processing are considered as `given' in such systems, or is it just that `rules as inherent to OODBs' is a relatively recent idea ? Again, would appreciate any idea or pointer that you may have. Thanks, Ramesh Subramanian subraman@andromeda.rutgers.edu