An architecture for object management in OIS

The design of a prototype for an application development environment in OIS (Office Information Systems), OPAL, is outlined. OPAL is based on an object management approach. The paper starts with a short discussion on object oriented systems and some important related concepts including Modularity, Instantiation, Property Inheritance and Subclassing, Active Objects and finally OIS-Modeling Tools. The authors' effort in this direction, OPAL, is based on the PACKET concept, which is the principal data and action structuring device. Programs, data including large data bases, meta-data as well as system defined components are all represented as objects which in turn are implemented as packets. Since all components in the system are considered as objects, it is possible to manage them all in a uniform way which in turn simplifies the system tremendously.