View integration of object life-cycles in object-oriented design

Abstract

Object-oriented database schemas are often defined by several future users of the planned database, where each user defines a schema representing his/her view on the database; the complete database schema is defined by integrating these views in a subsequent step. Behavior of objects is often defined at two levels of detail: at the level of methods and at the level of object life-cycles that represent the overall behavior of objects during their life time. This paper presents an approach to integrate views of object life-cycles to a complete object life-cycle of an object type. We will particularly consider the problem that different users know about parts of the object life-cycle at different levels of detail and often do not consider exactly the same set of entities.