Dr. Mayer Goldberg

Associations between objects are one of the most fundamental concepts in object-oriented design. The choices of how to implement associations determine how operations on the associated instances are performed: Sequentially or in parallel, with or without cached results, and with a transient or persistent effect. In this work, we propose a scheme that allows for generated code to support different methods of operating on associated instances, without requiring changes to the client code. These methods include using indices, traversing the association in parallel, or using a database. Instead of the sequential iterator interface, we propose to use an interface that include operations over multiple instances: Foreach, Filter, Map and Fold. This interface allows for realizing designs that involve sending messages to multiple associated instances, such as UML sequence and communication diagrams. The realization does not depend on the implementation details of the associations.