Object oriented database using frames in second generation APL

Abstract

The appeal of Object Oriented systems and methodologies is that they provide conceptually simple and powerful tools to represent the real-world. The essential elements of object orientation include: information hiding, classes, dynamic instantiation of objects, methods and the inheritance of properties by objects. Frames are a way to combine both data and procedures to represent knowledge. This paper describes a frame representation system that is used to create a simple object oriented database. The frame structures are described and it is shown that they can be represented as nested arrays. The inheritance mechanisms are detailed and functions developed to handle the frames. Finally a proposal is made for the further development of frame structured systems in APL.