Object-Orientation FAQ

Product Description	

ObjectStore[TM] is a high performance ODBMS designed for ease of use in
development of sophisticated applications using object-oriented
development techniques.  It offers a tightly-integrated language
interface to a complete set of traditional DBMS features including
persistence, transaction management (concurrency control and
recovery), distributed access, associative queries over large amounts
of data, and database administration utilities.  ObjectStore's data
management facilities combined with popular development tools create a
high productivity development environment for implementing
object-oriented applications.

Key Features:

   - Transparent interface designed for popular C and C++ programming
     environments. 

   - Concurrent access to large amounts of persistent data. 

   - Distribution of objects over networks using a variety of popular
     network protocols.

   - Access to persistent data at the same speed as transient data.

   - Extensible data modeling capabilities for applications requiring
     complex data structures.

   - Easy migration path for existing C and C++ applications.

   - Class libraries for version and configuration management.

   - Class libraries for managing collections of objects.

   - A fully distributed (multi-server/multi-database) ad hoc query
     capability.

   - An interactive Browser to inspect objects and object
     descriptions.

   - Interoperable with ObjectStore servers running on other operating
     systems and hardware environments.

   - Complete schema evolution for an application's metadata and
     existing object instances.

   - Full online backup for continuous processing environments.

   - Meta object protocol with programmatic access to schema
     information. 

   - Dynamic Type creation for extending existing class definitions
     during program execution.

System View

ObjectStore supports cooperative access through its flexible
client/server software architecture, which allows users to make the
take advantage of the computational power that exists on the desktop.
ObjectStore's client/server implementation allows one server to
support many client workstations, each workstation to simultaneously
access multiple databases on many servers, and a server to be resident
on the same machine as a client.  ObjectStore's distributed
architecture supports several network environments for
interoperability among popular workstations and PC's and includes
support for TCP/IP, Novell IPX/SPX, other popular network protocols.

Application Interface

Access to ObjectStore is provided through a library based application
interface compatible with popular C and C++ compilers and programming
environments.  The ObjectStore application interface provides support
for C++ compilers -- such as those from workstation suppliers -- and
development environments from independent software vendors such as
Visual C++ from Microsoft, ObjectCenter from CenterLine Software, Inc.
and Energize from Lucid, Inc.  The application interface provides
powerful high-level function calls which enable the programmer to
create multi-user application which share large amounts of data.
These functions include:

   - Relationship Management
   - Version Management
   - Collection Management
   - Storage Management
   - Associative Queries
   - Object Iteration
   - Transaction Management
   - Index Management
   - Clustering

Applications developed using ObjectStore library calls are
source-level compatible with ObjectStore applications developed for
other operating systems on other hardware platforms.

Platforms

ObjectStore is available on the following major platforms:
Unix Workstation Platforms

   - DEC MIPS Ultrix
   - HP 700 Series HP-UX
   - HP 800 Series HP-UX
   - IBM RS/6000 AIX
   - NCR 3000
   - Olivetti LSX-50xx SVR4
   - Silicon Graphics IRIX 5.x
   - SunSoft Intel Solaris 2
   - SunSoft SPARC Solaris 1 SunOS 4
   - SunSoft SPARC Solaris 2 SunOS 5
   - Univel UnixWare

PC Platforms

   - Windows 3.1 (Win32s)
   - Windows NT (Intel)
   - OS/2 Release 2.0 and 2.1
   - Novell Netware Release 3.1 and 4.0 (server only)

The Company

Object Design, Inc.
25 Mall Road
Burlington, MA  01803
U.S.A.

Voice: 1-800-962-9620
       (617) 674-5179
       (617) 674-5000
Fax:   (617) 674-5010