Architecture


Maybe you expect the UML-design sketch of an O/R access layer now. Sorry. Before we come to this we have to talk about design forces and requirements for an object/relational access layer. We follow the line that we will first explain what we need to build before we explain how you can build it. The latter will happen in the section on general architecture for o/r layers and also OODBMS.

Forces Driving the Design of O/R Access Layers

The following set of forces that influence the design of an o/r access layer  is adapted from Accessing Relational Databases [Kel+98a]. There are only a few more forces here than for pure relational access layers:

Check you do not build one of the above applications before you map objects to relations.

Requirements for Object/Relational Access Layers

Given that you have to use a relational database and given that you want a fully object-oriented application kernel it is good to have a list of typical functionality for an object-oriented database. The Object-Oriented Database System Manifesto [Atk+89] (direct link) contains a very comprehensive list of the functionality you might want to provide (see Table 1) with your object/relational access layer.

OODBMS Manifesto:
Mandatory Features
Object/Relational Access Layers:
Covered by

(1) Complex Objects

Your programming language for business objects (like C++, Smalltalk, Java, ...), your RDBMS plus an access layer.

(2) Object Identity

See Object Identity Pattern

(3) Encapsulation

Your programming language

(4) Types and Classes

Your programming language

(5) Class or Type Hierarchies

Your programming language plus patterns for Mapping Objects to Tables.

(6) Overriding, overloading and late binding

Your programming language

OODBMS Manifesto:
Mandatory Features
Object/Relational Access Layers:
Covered by

(7) Computational Completeness

Your programming language

(8) Extensibility

Your programming language plus patterns for Mapping Objects to Tables.

(9) Persistence

Whole access layer plus relational database (RDBMS).

(10) Secondary storage management

RDBMS

(11) Concurrency

RDBMS plus patterns for transaction control and locking strategies.

(12) Recovery

RDBMS

(13) Ad Hoc Query Facility

access layer on top of RDBMS

Table 1: Core responsibilities of an Object-oriented Database Management System

Most of the functionality listed in Table 1 comes with your object-oriented programming language (like 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). The challenge is to make your object-oriented programming language’s objects persistent, giving them the ability to survive the termination of the actual process and to be used again in other (also in parallel) processes.

Therefore the other requirements are typical requirements that you find for databases (like 9, 10, 11, 12,13). See any database book for an explanation, e.g. [Dat95].

Two Layer Architecture

The main pattern for object/relational access layers is Two Layer Persistency Subsystem. But at the top level you will find other patterns that are also concerned with coarse structure. Follow the hot spots on the Roadmap in order to find the right source..

Roadmap

or_archroadmap.gif (4109 Byte)

Figure 4: Local Roadmap: Architecting an Object/Relational Access Layer

Pattern List

Pattern: Two Layer Persistency Subsystem

Problem

    What is good way to structure an object-oriented database or an object/relational access layer?

Forces

    Remember the above discussion on Separation of concerns versus cost: Database programming is complex, storage subsystems are complex but they are known abstractions. Object-oriented programming languages are also proven concepts. Both have enough complexity. Mapping one concept to the other and not dividing into further subsystems could easily sum up to a nightmare of complexity. The easiest way is to separate the concepts of object-orientation from those of database programming and to separate the object-oriented database aspects from the relational database aspects. You are then able to exploit well- known patterns for each of the problem domains. The cost of separated layers has to pay off with increased maintainability and easier performance tuning.

    Application style is another force. You should be able to adapt you object persistence subsystem to the different application styles mentioned above. It makes a great difference, whether you intend to write a transaction oriented system or a system that can best be described with check in/check out persistence.

    Finally the possible integration of legacy data sources will have its effects on you design.

Solution

    Build your system as two subsystems that form a layered structure. The upper layer, called the object layer, encapsulates the concepts of object-orientation while the lower layer, called the storage manager, offers a high level interface on top of your physical storage devices or file system. A relational database in this context is just another physical storage device.

Structure

    or_twolayers.gif (7431 Byte)

    Figure 5: Two Layer Structure of a Persistency Subsystem for
    Object-Oriented Programming Languages (o-o programming languages)

    Assign the following responsibilities from The Object-Oriented Database System Manifesto [Atk+89] to the layers.

    Object Layer:

    The object layer encapsulates the concepts of object orientation. It has the following responsibilities: (1) Complex Objects, (2) Object Identity, (3) Encapsulation, (4) Types and Classes, (5) Class or Type Hierarchies, (6) Overriding, overloading and late binding, (7) Computational Completeness, (8) Extensibility, (13) Ad Hoc Query Facility. This is the object-oriented programming languages part of the requirements listed in Table 1.

    Storage Manager:

    The Storage Manager provides an interface to a Physical Storage Subsystem. It has the following responsibilities: (9) Persistence, (10) Secondary storage management, (11) Concurrency, (12) Recovery, (13) Ad Hoc Query Facility. This is the database part of the requirements listed in Table 1. The only exception is the "Ad Hoc Query Facility". The Ad Hoc Query Facility is a database concept that you wrap at the level of your object-oriented language in order to offer your user the equivalent of SQL. Therefore you have to deal with some form of Object SQL (also called Object Query Language (OQL) [ODMG93]) in both layers.

    This discussion could lead to some form of abstract pattern. Whenever you have two paradigms that need to be mapped on one another, you can come up with an architecture that consists of two layers. These layers contain the respective abstractions of the two paradigms, and the upper layer (the paradigm you want to map onto another) needs some code to call the lower layer – this code is mostly in the broker patterns (see Moving Attributes to and from the Tuple Layer)

Consequences

    Manageability and complexity: This approach breaks the problem down into manageable parts by cutting it into two halves – and one of these, the storage manager, is not a new problem but a kind of component with a long lasting design history.

    Application Style: You can adapt your persistence subsystem to different application styles by plugging in different storage managers. The need to adapt to transactional legacy systems will influence your storage manager but not your object layer.

Variants

    An object/relational access layer is a variant of an object-oriented database. An architectural sketch from POET makes this quite evident. POET is an object-oriented database that uses a relational database (plus an access layer) as its storage subsystem.

    or_poet.gif (5056 Byte)

    If you do not use an object-oriented database with a relational database as its storage manager you have to build an object/relational access layer. For the rest of the paper we will use the term tuple layer instead of storage subsystem as we use relational databases to store our objects.

     

    or_relationallayers.gif (4621 Byte)

    Figure 6: Two Layer Structure for an Object/relational access Layer

Related Patterns

    We have used the concepts of Layers [Bus+96] here. All the other patterns in this paper are further solutions to the problems of how to build such an access layer.

Known Uses

Most object-oriented databases and object/relational access layers are built this way. We have already cited POET [POE97] as an arbitrary example. TopLink is an example that uses the pattern in a object/relational access layer product [TOP97a,TOP97b]. There are many project solutions, that follow the same architecture [Bar+95, Hah+95, Kel+98b, Sta+97, Wal+95]. Another use of the architecture can be found in [Hei98]. Heinckiens distinguishes an object layer, a database layer and brokers between the two layers, which he calls Impedance Mismatch Resolvers.


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