Object-Orientation FAQ

From: Graham.Dumpleton@nms.otc.com.au (Graham Dumpleton)
Date: Tue, 9 May 1995 08:58:55 +1000 (EST)

OSE is a collection of programming tools and class libraries for C++. The
core of the environment is the C++ class libraries, of which three are
provided. These are:

  OTCLIB - A library of generic components, including support for error
  handling, error message logging, error recovery, program debugging,
  memory management, resource management, generic collections, text
  manipulation, date/time, operating system interfacing and event driven
  systems.

  OUXLIB - A library of components which primarily extends classes in the
  OTCLIB library to support features specific to the UNIX operating
  system.

  OTKLIB - A library of components which builds on the OTCLIB and OUXLIB
  libraries to allow integration of the TCL/TK library into applications
  using the event driven systems framework provided by the OTCLIB
  library.

The C++ libraries are portable to a wide range of C++ compilers on the
UNIX platform. Supported C++ compilers include those from ATT/USL (CFRONT),
CenterLine, DEC, HP, IBM, Lucid, ObjectStore, SGI (CFRONT), SGI (DELTA),
Sun (CFRONT) and Sun (NATIVE), as well as the freely available GNU C++
compiler. If your C++ compiler does not support templates, it is possible
to use a template preprocessor which is supplied with OSE. If your C++
compiler support exceptions, they will be used. Portability to all the
major variants of UNIX has been achieved. Supported platforms include AIX,
BSD, HPUX, IRIX, Linux, NeXT, OSF, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, SYSV and Ultrix. In
addition to being available under UNIX, the OTCLIB library has been ported
to DOS, OS/2 and Windows NT using Borland, Watcom and Microsoft C++
compilers.

The C++ libraries have been fully integrated with the ObjectStore OODBMS,
allowing instances of classes from the C++ libraries to be made persistent.
The C++ libraries can also be used in conjunction with applications using
Versant, although in this case instances of classes from the C++ libraries
cannot be made persistent.

In addition to the C++ libraries, a build environment is provided. The
build environment greatly simplifies the writing of makefiles, making the
the task of building applications, as well as the generation and
installation of both static and shared libraries easy. The details of
template instantiation for many of the C++ compilers is also hidden, making
it possible to write makefiles which are portable between different C++
compilers as well as different platforms. The build environment also
supports tasks such as schema generation for the ObjectStore and Versant
OODBMS, and testing of applications using tools such as Purify, Quantify,
PureCoverage, TestCenter and Sentinel.

Comprehensive documentation for the C++ libraries and build environment is
provided. Documentation for the C++ libraries comes in the form of a UNIX
style manual page for each class and higher level documentation giving
examples of how to use the classes. The UNIX style manual pages are
generated from the class header files using documentation extraction tools.
These tools are provided with OSE and are capable of generating both UNIX
style manual pages and Frame documents.

Development of OSE commenced in 1990, being made freely available via the
Internet in 1993. OSE was winner of CODA'94, the ComputerWorld Object
Developer Awards, held in conjunction with ObjectWorld in Sydney,
Australia. The category in which OSE was a winner was "Best implementation
of a reusable development environment for company deployment".

OSE (source code and documentation) can be obtained via anonymous ftp from:

  Europe: