Metaclasses and Their Application: Data Model Tailoring and Database Integration

Conventional object-oriented data models are closed: although they allow users to define application-specific classes, they usually come with a fixed set of modelling primitives. This constitutes a major problem, as different application domains, e.g. database integration or multimedia, need special support.

Using an extended metaclass concept, this book provides for the solution of this problem a simple but extendible open object-oriented data model, a so-called RISC model. By introducing...