A Lightweight Object Manager for Group-Aware Applications

Groupware applications used in distributed office environments are characterized by several users accessing and manipulating a shared document pool in a collaborative context. Supporting such application with relational database persistence and object technology requires two main features: (1) a sound and generic mapping from the object-oriented application schema to the relational data model, and (2) update notification, i.e., means to notify users easily about changes in the shared document pool. In this paper we present a lightweight object manager that implements (1) an object-relational mapping that allows for efficient persistency of application classes, and (2) group-awareness by update notification combining database triggers with client polling and object notification services.