Pattern Reification as the Basis for Description-Driven Systems

One of the main factors driving object-oriented software development for information systems is the requirement for systems to be tolerant to change. To address this issue in designing systems, this paper proposes a pattern-based, object-oriented, description-driven system (DDS) architecture as an extension to the standard UML four-layer meta-model. A DDS architecture is proposed in which aspects of both static and dynamic systems behavior can be captured via descriptive models and meta-models. The proposed architecture embodies four main elements - firstly, the adoption of a multi-layered meta-modeling architecture and reflective meta-level architecture, secondly the identification of four data modeling relationships that can be made explicit such that they can be modified dynamically, thirdly the identification of five design patterns which have emerged from practice and have proved essential in providing reusable building blocks for data management, and fourthly the encoding of the structural properties of the five design patterns by means of one fundamental pattern, the Graph pattern. A practical example of this philosophy, the CRISTAL project, is used to demonstrate the use of description-driven data objects to handle system evolution.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

The Reification of Patterns in the Design of Description-Driven Systems

To address the issues of reusability and evolvability in designing self- describing systems, this paper proposes a pattern-based, object-oriented, description-driven system architecture. The proposed architecture embodies four pillars - first, the adoption of a multi-layered meta-modeling architecture and reflective meta-level architecture, second, the identification of four data modeling relationships that must be made explicit such that they can be examined and modified dynamically, third, the identification of five design patterns which have emerged from practice and have proved essential in providing reusable building blocks for data management, and fourth, the encoding of the structural properties of the five design patterns by means of one pattern, the Graph pattern. The CRISTAL research project served as the basis onto which the pattern-based meta-object approach has been applied. The proposed architecture allows the realization of reusability and adaptability, and is fundamental in the specification of self-describing data management components.Comment: 10 pages 11 figure

Object Serialization and Deserialization Using XML

Interoperability of potentially heterogeneous databases has been an ongoing research issue for a number of years in the database community. With the trend towards globalization of data location and data access and the consequent requirement for the coexistence of new data stores with legacy systems, the cooperation and data interchange between data repositories has become increasingly important. The emergence of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a database independent representation for data offers a suitable mechanism for transporting data between repositories. This paper describes a research activity within a group at CERN (called CMS) towards identifying and implementing database serialization and deserialization methods that can be used to replicate or migrate objects across the network between CERN and worldwide centres using XML to serialize the contents of multiple objects resident in object-oriented databases.Comment: 14 pages 7 figure