View-based tool integration in database-centered environment

ABSTRACT

Database-centered environment architectures differ significantly from file-based architectures. Consequently they require a different set of primitives for tool support. This paper describes a form of tool composition called cotools which provides many of the benefits of UNIX pipes in terms of being able to reuse existing tools in tool composites, and allowing tools to operate concurrently ad incrementally on data. However, the tool language and the composition model is tailored to provide these benefits in a database-centered environment where tools do not directly communicate with each other. The effect of communication is achieved by allowing member tools in a cotool to access common data in a coordinated manner while allowing the changes made to data by one tool immediately visible to other tools in the cotool. Since database transactions normally maintain consistency in a database by disallowing interleaved data manipulation amongst separate applications, certain modifications to the concept of transactions are required. One of goals from a systemic point of view is to allow the benefits of tool cooperation without completely violating the transactions idea, which is a very clean mechanism for maintaining data consistency in a shared data store.

REFERENCES

• 1: Lightweight Processes Manual:SunOS4.0.
• 2: Bowen Alpern , Alan Carle , Barry Rosen , Peter Sweeney , Kenneth Zadeck, Graph attribution as a specification paradigm, Proceedings of the third ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments, p.121-129, November 28-30, 1988, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 3: Marc H. Brown , Robert Sedgewick, A system for algorithm animation, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, v.18 n.3, p.177-186, July 1984
• 4: Adele Goldberg , David Robson, Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1983
• 5: Roger L. Haskin , Raymond A. Lorie, On extending the functions of a relational database system, Proceedings of the 1982 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 02-04, 1982, Orlando, Florida [doi>10.1145/582353.582390]
• 6: N. H. Madhavji, Fragtypes: A Basis for Programming Environments, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.14 n.1, p.85-97, January 1988 [doi>10.1109/32.4625]
• 7: Soumitra Sarkar , Bruce Weide, The design of a software environment architecture based on executable process descriptions, 1989
• 8: S. Sarkar and }. Ramanathan. Data model and persistent language features for integrated project support environments. Technical Report OSU-CISRC- 6/89-TR22, The Ohio State University, 1989.
• 9: A. H. Skarra, Concurrency control for cooperating transactions in an object-oriented database, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.24 n.4, p.145-147, April 1989
• 10: Richard Snodgrass , Karen Shannon, Supporting flexible and efficient tool integration, An international workshop on Advanced programming environments, p.290-313, January 1986, Trondheim, Norway
• 11: V. Venugopal. Active Tool Support for Software Development Environments. PhD thesis, The Ohio State University, 1989.
• 12: V. Venugopal and J. Ramanathan. Programmed views for object-oriented environments. Technical Report OSU-CISRC-6/89-TR21, The Ohio State University, 1989.
• 13: Vasudevan Venugopal and Soumitra Sarkar. A tool integration mechanism for database-centered CASE environments, Technical report, The Ohio State University, 1989.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.1 Logical Design
          Subjects: Data models

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Modules and interfaces

  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design