Hyperobjects: an Object-oriented, 4th-generation System Prototype

Object-oriented programming is currently revolutionizing application programming technology. Beyond flexible implementation techniques, object-orientation offers a very convincing thought model which allows modelling real world entities and their relations in a natural way. For this reason database research is also trying to benefit from object-oriented advantages. But for end users and 4th-generation developers, objects are still merely a marketing buzzword for graphical user interfaces. In the HyperObject project we are trying to make general purpose, object-oriented data models visible and accessible for information system designers and end users. A primary goal is to make the object model transparent to the user. In this paper the basic concepts of HyperObjects and their implementation are presented. Based on experiences with a first prototype, we discuss useful improvements and outline our future plans. Research Report