Operators of the temporal object system and their implementation

Abstract

We proposed a temporal object system (TOS) which maintains changes to both the structure and the state of an object in a temporal fashion. Objects in TOS are referred to as temporal objects and are allowed to evolve over time. A collection of temporal objects which share the same set of common properties is grouped into a family. A temporal object that can be defined by using the local knowledge of a family is referred to as an offstage object. We also discussed the renovations of both temporal complex objects and offstage objects. This paper is a continuation of the work reported, and now we report on the operators of the TOS and their implementation. These operators are grouped into three different modules of the TOS based on their relevant functions. These modules are: object manager (or object module), family module, and root of TOS (RTOS) module. The important module is the object manager (OM) that consists of basic operators. The modules provide a facility for defining a simple temporal object and later to add a stage in the temporal object. The other operators are grouped into the two other modules and are referred to as RTOS module and family module. We have implemented these operators using the SELF version 4.0 programming language on a SUN Sparc Workstation running Solaries 2.4.