Higher-Level Genericity in Object-Oriented Databases.
Klaus‐Dieter Schewe, David W. Stemple, Bernhard Thalheim · 1994
Object oriented databases (OODBs) are composed of semi-independent objects but must also provide for the maintenance of inter-object consistency, especially with respect to constraints arising from class hierarchies and inter-object references. Hence the problem to provide consistent generic update methods. We address the problem how to derive such methods from the structure of an OODB schema by the specification of generator macros for them. These generators are based on a strict mathematical formalization of OODB concepts including the possibility to represent syntactic components of the language as values within the language itself, which is known to form the basis of linguistic reflection. Moreover, the approach can be extended to the enforcement of user-defined integrity constraints that give rise to context sensitive macros turning each user-defined method into branches of its greatest consistent specialization.