Proteus: Objectifying the DBMS User Interface

Our thesis it that the external representation of all components of a database system should be under programmer control: objects, schemes, commands, even the representation specifications themselves. Here we give the rationale and design for the PROTEUS interface system that sits atop an object-oriented DBMS. After introducing the model, TEDM, for the DBMS, we describe the classes of objects that model components of the database of interest to PROTEUS: type definitions, representation definitions, layouts, commands, and representation mappings. The advantage of “objectifying” everything is three-fold: the database itself can manage all the information of interest to PROTEUS, representations can be changed via database updates, and the representation mappings themselves can be expressed as database commands or rules. We conclude by showing how the pieces fit together, and outline some of our current research directions.

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