Autonomous objects: A natural model for complex applications

Abstract

Object-oriented database systems are emerging as the “next generation” DBMSs for advanced applications, e.g., VLSI design, mechanical CAD/CAM, software engineering, etc. However, a close analysis indicates that the requirements imposed by these application domains cannot be met by an object-oriented model that relies purely onpassive objects. In this work we go beyond the conventionalsingle-thread-of-control paradigm of passive object models and propose a model ofactive objects which can autonomously initiate responses to environmental changes.Autonomous objects cooperate with each other by synchronous orasynchronous message passing—giving rise to themultiple-thread-of-control in such an environment. It is shown howevents—to which active objects react—can be incorporated into this model. We propose a nondeterministic computational model for the individual active objects that allows the autonomous reaction upon events. We show that this very sparse extension to an object-oriented model gives rise to several high-level features which can be controlled by events. The object-oriented paradigm allows one to isolate the rules according to which events are being raised. This leads to a potentially rather efficient execution model compared to existing relational concepts, which are typically globally-defined event trigger mechanisms.