A STRAWMAN REFERENCE MODEL FOR AN APPLICATION PROGRAM INTERFACE TO AN OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE

This position paper provides a strawman reference model which can be used to compare and reason about an application program's interface (API) to an Object-Oriented Data Base system (OODBs), with an emphasis on object manipulation from an object-oriented programming language binding.1 We begin with an introduction of OODBs and describe the broad domain for an OODB reference model as well as the specific sub-domain we will discuss. Next, we describe some goals of the reference model for the specific sub-domain. A descriptive reference model is then described as consisting of a collection of design choices that can be used for comparing existing and future application program interfaces to OODBs. Finally, based on the descriptive reference model, we define a functional reference model that provides a much more precise description of the interface provided by one such OODB, Zeitgeist, being developed at Texas Instruments.