Cooperation in Object Bases through Alliances

Abstract

Interaction of objects in today's object-oriented database systems is based on four premises: First, messages are procedures, which are executed instantaneously. Second, interaction is limited to two objects, a client and a server. Third, communication contexts are defined algorithmically by procedures --- or at top level --- by transactions. Fourth, all objects are globally accessible no matter where they physically reside in a computer network (location transparency). We argue in this paper that this paradigm of object interaction does not suffice for large-scale cooperative and distributed applications such as computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM), distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), or office automation which are characterized, on the one hand, by autonomously acting agents which allow for the necessary high degree of specialization to meet local computing requirements and, on the other hand, by the need for coordination among these agents. As a remedy we propose a strict ..