Programming versus databases in the object-oriented paradigm

Abstract

The object-oriented paradigm has come to the forefront of the research community in the software engineering, programming language, and database research areas. Moreover, the paradigm appears capable of supporting advanced applications such as software development environments (SDEs) that require both programming ability and persistency via a database system. However, there exists a disparity between the programming and database approaches to the object-oriented paradigm. The paper examines and discusses this disparity between the two approaches for the purpose of formulating an understanding of their commonalities and differences. This understanding has been instrumental in supporting work involving the prototyping of SDEs using the object-oriented paradigm, an examination of the techniques required to evolve a class library for persistency, and the proposal of a software architecture and functionality of a persistent programming language system. Thus, it is believed that the work presented in this paper can serve as a framework for researchers and practitioners whose efforts include the aforementioned or other, related areas. From a content perspective, this paper provides a comparative analysis between the concepts of programming and databases for the object-oriented paradigm, through a detailed presentation of system-level and model-level considerations. Both philosophical concepts and implementation pragmatics are investigated. A practical examination of the C++ programming language versus the Opal data language has been conducted, revealing many valuable insights of systems and application details and issues. Features of both approaches are also analysed and illustrated.