ADAM: an object-oriented database system implemented in Prolog
BNCOD 7 Proceedings of the seventh British national conference on Databases
The art of metaobject protocol
The art of metaobject protocol
Metaobject protocols: why we want them and what else they can do
Object-oriented programming
Database integration using the open object-oriented database system VODAK
Object-oriented multidatabase systems
Metadata and active object-models
Addendum to the 1998 proceedings of the conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (Addendum)
IDEAS '98 Proceedings of the 1998 International Symposium on Database Engineering & Applications
Metadata Management and Data Warehousing
Metadata Management and Data Warehousing
CRISTAL: A practical study in designing systems to cope with change
Information Systems
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One of the main factors driving object-oriented software development in the Web-age is the need for systems to evolve as user requirements change. A crucial factor in the creation of adaptable systems dealing with changing requirements is the suitability of the underlying technology in allowing the evolution of the system. A reflective system utilizes an open architecture where implicit system aspects are reified to become explicit first-class (metadata) objects. These implicit system aspects are often fundamental structures which are inaccessible and immutable, and their reification as meta-data objects can serve as the basis for changes and extensions to the system, making it self-describing. To address the evolvability issue, this paper proposes a reflective architecture based on two orthogonal abstractions - model abstraction and information abstraction. In this architecture the modeling abstractions allow for the separation of the description meta-data from the system aspects they represent so that they can be managed and versioned independently, asynchronously and explicitly. A practical example of this philosophy, the CRISTAL project, is used to demonstrate the use of meta-data objects to handle system evolution.