Object-Orientation and Distributed Objects

Object orientation has influenced many technologies. For example, its effects can be felt in programming languages, user interfaces, and databases.

The basic components of objects are class, object, message, and inheritance. These are the components that make object orientation flexible and reusable. There are three core object oriented technologies: object oriented user interfaces, object oriented programming, and object oriented databases.

Object Oriented User Interfaces (OOUI) are in contrast to GUIs. GUIs provide dialog boxes and all the tools for navigating and formatting as well as extracting input from the user in the form of their service request. They contain graphic dialog boxes, colors, menus, scroll bars, pull-down and pop-up windows. GUIs can only perform one function at a time, while OOUIs support multi-tasking and unpredictable sequencing. Mac uses OOUI.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is one of the dominant languages for building software. Java, C++, and C# are examples of object oriented programming languages. These languages specifically support the concept of inheritance in object orientation. Inheritance represents the active relationship between classes. Classes are categories of objects. Inheritance allows classes to behave like other classes and customize those behaviors according to request needs.

Object databases store and retrieve irregular objects like arrays, icons, sets, and lists, to name a few. These objects are varied as are their relationships to each other. They can be internally complex or simple. They can relate to each other through complex relationships and inherit properties from each other.

Reusable software components that can be assembled quickly to create new applications. These reusable software parts are called component parts or applets.

Distributed objects are objects that are dispersed across a network, but can communicate through that same network. They are applications that are “de-composed” into objects located in a network. Networks are understood as a collection of objects where an object on one machine can message an object in a different location. This concept of distributed objects is helping alleviate many IT problems around portability, interoperability, and re-use, for example. In distributed computing, applications can be constructed from re-usable component parts or applets. Re-usable components encapsulate internal details and function on a different platform improving their interoperability.

Distributed object models start at the bottom with object service. These communicate with the ORB (Object Request Broker) layer. The ORB has access to all object services. Client objects above the ORB layer communicate with it. The ORB the retrieves requested services from the object services layer and communicates it back to the client objects. This same process can be repeated by server objects, which conceptually exist on the same plane as client objects in relation to object services.

Object-Oriented Client Server Internet Environments

OCSI combines object-orientation, Client-Server models, and the Internet to improve business functionality. There are two multi-layered modules side by side. One is the client side and one is the server side. At the bottom of both of these modules are the operating system and hardware. These two communicate through an exchange protocol. The second layer of each contains local and network services side by side in the client and server modules.

The next layer consists of client middleware and server middleware, respectively. Client middleware in OCSI is a web browser. Server middleware in this model includes web servers, SQL (Standard Query Language) servers, or object servers. At the top layer on the client side are client processes like web-based user interfaces. On the server side are server processes like business objects. On both the client side and the server side are application programming interfaces (APIs).

By using the World Wide Web through the Internet, the Object Oriented Client Server Internet (OCSI) model is making user interfaces equivalent with web browsers. This means web users can access HTML documents directly from web servers or from private organizations through gateways. OCSI makes it possible for users to access remote databases through a combo of traditional Client-Server technology, like remote procedure call (RPC) and distributed object models (DOMs).

Client and server programs are both understood as objects being transmitted to the web browser that communicate using remote object oriented calls. This treats them like distributed object. Networks, like the Internet, contain routers so messages can find the most efficient paths and gateways to translate one kind of protocol into another. Database managers and transaction process monitors create interconnectivity between networks and client server environments.

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