[Objectbridge-developers] Object Identities

[Dixon-Peugh, D. <Dav...@tp...>]

I was poking around with the idea of Object Identities
yesterday, and think I may have come accross some nice
features.

First off, it is not necessary that we build the Identity
object from the database.  It should be possible to build
an Identity object by hand, from an XML document or from
an HTML form.

This is important as it should not be possible to create
the actual object from any place asside from its source.
If a persistent object already exists, then you want to
get it from the source to ensure that it is complete.

Secondly, the introduction of Identities provides us with
a nifty implementation of the ODMG collections.  We could
build the internal collection with lightweight identity
objects, and when references are made to "getObject" or
what have you, we could return the actual object the identity
represents.

Why would we want to use Identities instead of the actual
objects?  First, all of our collections that we manage
would be of the same type.  Second, as we provide the
implementation of the Identity, we can do things to make
it easier.  (Like provide Comparable interface to the
Identities.)

Thirdly, we get all the benefits that Thomas has brought
up.  It allows lazy retrieval of the information.

Thoughts, comments?

Any chance we can get ObJectBridge into CVS so I can 
check in some code?

Thanks,

David.