In the presentation we will show how OmniBase is being used, its object model and meta-data features. We will take a look into OmniBase internals and also show how to extend it with new types of persistent objects.
OmniBase, which is sometimes refered to as an object-database, is in reality �just� a Smalltalk objects persistency system. OmniBase extends Smalltalk image with multi-user access and persistency capabilities. At the moment OmniBase is available for Dolphin Smalltalk, VisualAge Smalltalk, Cincom VisualWorks, Squeak and ST/X. With OmniBase it is possible to store any Smalltalk object in the database with all its relationships with other persistent objects. OmniBase also provides some new objects which are optimized for persistet storage. Such objects include various virtual b-tree dictionaries which can be used for indexing large amounts of data. For concurrency control OmniBase employs multi-version concurrency control where readers never block writers and writers never block readers. Although this type of concurrency control provides high concurrency potential some of its implications have to be considered when one develops an application with OmniBase.
Our goal is that after following the presentation one should gather enough experience and information to be able to developed applications with the OmniBase object persistency system.
David Gorisek