A mechanism for environment integration

Abstract

This paper describes research associated with the development and evaluation of Odin-an environment integration system based on the idea that tools should be integrated around a centralized store of persistent software objects. The paper describes this idea in detail and then presents the Odin architecture, which features such notions as the typing of software objects, composing tools out of modular tool fragments, optimizing the storage and rederivation of software objects, and isolating tool interconnectivity information in a single centralized object. The paper then describes some projects that have used Odin to integrate tools on a large scale. Finally, it discusses the significance of this work and the conclusions that can be drawn about superior software environment architectures.