System for processing application programs including a language independent context management technique

Abstract

A data processing system having a language independent context management facility, implements scripting related functions by providing abstract classes. Scripting related objects in a visual builder are: script action objects; script development environments (support object-oriented and procedural scripting languages) and action objects and script debuggers. Abstract classes such as extension language, extension method, and extension activation are used to implement the script-related objects listed above. To support a specific scripting language, a language specific implementation is generated by creating subclasses for the extension language, extension method, and extension activation classes.

Description

This application for patent is related to the following applications for patent filed concurrently herewith:

A Computer System for Executing Action Slots including Multiple Action Object Classes, Ser. No. 08/175,999, now abandoned;

A System for Processing an Application Program Including Application Objects, Ser. No. 08/175,465, now abandoned;

Method and System for Efficient Control of the Execution of Actions in an Object Oriented Program, Ser. No. 08/175,873.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to data processing systems, and more particularly to data processing systems having a facility for constructing object oriented programs from objects or macros written in different program languages.

2. Prior Art

Object oriented programming systems provide means for creation and reuse of objects for the purpose of program generation, database management, graphical user interface generation and similar applications. To make most efficient use of object oriented programming, a variety of tools or utilities are required to overcome deficiencies in programming language and operating systems. More particularly, in the design and implementation of application program frameworks, there is a need to create object libraries and to extend well-known programming languages such as the C language to have object oriented capabilities. Further, applications should be designed and implemented so that they may be operating system independent and be able to be run on multiple diverse operating system platforms such as OS/2, AIX, UNIX or Windows. A reference text book which provides a description of Object Oriented Systems, including terminology and structure, is Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications, second edition, by Grady Booch, published by Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co., Inc. 1993. Reference to this text may be made for definition of terms related to Object-Oriented Systems.

In the prior art, there have been many articles published relating to object oriented programming and several patents which describe implementations of inventions related to object oriented programming where the patents deal primarily with database or file system management in a computer system. An article in Output, Volume 19, No. 1, Pages 15-20, 1990, entitled "Development of Databases--Restricted, Object-Oriented System," by E. M. Mund discusses a flexible dictionary system and a necessary language-independent preprocessor to permit the establishment of a specific development and service environment. This environment permits the application of certain restricted object-oriented techniques, thus allowing the setting up and servicing of data systems to be significantly reduced.

Although the article generally discusses a language independent preprocessor for a data processing system, the article does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,132 discloses object-oriented programming language with application and programming objects and management. However, the patent does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,525,780 discloses objects each identified by a code. Application framework is organized as objects. The structure framework has a plurality of different high level user languages. However, the patent does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,953,080 discloses object management with applications and object structures and framework. However, the patent does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

An article in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin published March 1992, pages 1-3 discloses object-oriented language support with multilingual capability. However, the article does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

A C language reference manual published by Microsoft Corporation, Version 7.0 describes C and C++ language having object-like macros at page 192.

However, the manual does not teach nor suggest the use of persistent dictionaries in a language independent facility as does the present invention.

Graphical user interfaces for compound applications are created by using direct manipulation (drag and drop) and/or menu commands. The control logic of such a user interface can be created by using action objects as described in copending application (Ser. No. 08/175,999). One of the most powerful action objects is the script action object. The state of a script action object includes a macro that is interpreted when the action object is triggered. This macro is often written by using a high level programming language such as Smalltalk, REXX, or LISP. State of the art application builders such as Visual Basic and Digitalk Parts provide a functionality which is similar to a script action object. In Visual Basic, the user is limited to writing scripts in basic. In Digitalk Parts, the user is limited to writing scripts in Smalltalk. This type of restriction limits the market for the visual builder program product. The user population is often divided into groups which prefer to use different languages. For example, in information management systems shops (IMS), most users would prefer using REXX. In research-oriented or education laboratories, most users prefer using LISP. Since there are groups of users for each of these scripting languages, it is desirable to support multiple scripting languages in a single system.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide language independent extension code support in an object-oriented application framework system.

A data processing system having a language independent context management facility, implements scripting related functions by providing abstract classes. Scripting related objects in a visual builder are: script action objects; script development environments (support object-oriented and procedural scripting languages) and action objects and script debuggers. Abstract classes such as extension language, extension method, and extension activation are used to implement the script-related objects listed above.

To support a specific scripting language, a language specific implementation is generated by creating subclasses for the extension language, extension method, and extension activation classes.

The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and the specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a more complete understanding of the present invention, and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a computer system implementing the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of elements of the computer system of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the system for controlling the operation of the computer system in accordance with the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the components available in the compound object utilities in accordance with the present invention. FIG. 5 is a flow diagram showing the creation of a script action object in accordance with the present invention. FIG. 6, including 6A and 6B, is a flow diagram showing the triggering of a script action object in accordance with the present invention. FIG. 7 is a flow diagram showing the process for interpreting the script in the script action object triggered in FIG. 6 in accordance with the present invention. FIG. 8 is a block diagram showing the customization of abstract class objects to subclass implementation objects for a REXX language object.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

The data processing system embodying the present invention employs compound object technology and provides an application framework for interactive elements of application programs. Application programs are constructed of highly integrated components called application objects. Each application object contains two main parts: the first is the data and the second is the presentation. The data is packaged into an object that is persistent and observable. Persistent means that changes made to the state of the object are preserved from execution to execution. Observable means that changes in the state of the object are visible to other objects. Such data objects are called persistent observable data objects (POD). The presentation pan of an object is called the View object and is also observable. A View object is analogous to the user interface of a traditional application program. There may be several views of the same persistent observable data object. The end users of application objects modify PODs through their Views. A View may be used to present information contained in several persistent observable data objects. The PODs may be grouped into an Inset. An Inset is a collection of PODs with at least one default View for these PODs. The Inset is also a type of POD and is therefore both persistent and observable. In the system according to the present invention, object observability is achieved by the use of action slots and action objects as described in copending application 08/175,999 referred to above in the cross reference to related applications and incorporated by reference herein.

Referring now to FIGS. 1 and 2, a data processing system in accordance with the present invention will be generally described. Data Processing System 10 may be for example a stand-alone graphics workstation having a system unit 12, a color graphics monitor 14, a keyboard 16, and a mouse or other cursor control device 18. Modern graphics workstations are very powerful data processing systems which combine state of the art processing capability with large internal main memories coupled to peripheral storage systems such as magnetic disk drives or optical compact disks to provide the large amount of readily available storage required for graphics applications.

Data Processing System 10 includes processor 22, storage 24, bus 26, display subsystem 28 which drives a display device 30, cursor control logic 32 and input/output channel 34.

Referring now to FIG. 3, the control system will be generally described.

The data processing system described above with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 may be controlled by a commercially available and well-known multi-tasking operating system such as OS/2* (OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation). Among many other tasks which the OS/2 system controls in operating Data Processing System 10, a group of utilities referred to as compound object utilities 38 facilitate the implementation of the use of action objects and action slots in accordance with the present invention. The compound object utilities will be described with reference to FIG. 4.

Referring to FIG. 4, it can be seen that the components of compound object utilities 38 are grouped into several major categories. Among these are a visual builder component (there are many visual builder components available for generating visual objects in object oriented programming systems currently available). Visual object components such as push button, entry field, label, list, and combination box, etc., nonvisual objects such as tables, dictionaries, calculators, etc., editors, such as action objects, layout, properties, dictionaries, and tables, etc., and subclass action objects such as method, script, procedure and slot.

The visual builder is used to create applications visually. Visual builder provides a tool pallet which contains visual and nonvisual objects. The user can use drag/drop operations to create and update application user interfaces visually through a layout editor. Visual builder provides editors to edit or customize different features of an application. For example, property editor is used to change the properties of the objects such as color of a label object or text of a push button object.

The property editor is used to change the properties of objects. The dictionary editor is used to populate a dictionary with integer, real, string and object values. A table editor is used to create a table of numbers. The label editor is used to layout visual objects in compound applications. The second class action object such as method, script, procedure and slot are provided to extend the behavior of visual and nonvisual objects. The action object editor is used to create action objects and add them to the visual or nonvisual objects. Visual objects are used to create the graphical user interface (GUI) for compound applications. Nonvisual objects are used to create the data objects of the compound applications.

The COU components which most specifically relate to the present invention are the script action object, the action object editor, the development environment editor, and the debugger.

Referring now to FIG. 5, the creation of a script action object will be described. A script action object is created and the macro in the script action object is set by the setMacro message. Next, the target object is set by sending the setTargetObject message. The script action object is then added to an action slot on a source object by sending the addActionObject message to the source object; addActionObject parameters are action slot name and action object.

The script action object is allocated by calling:

somVPScript new().

The object key is then initialized by:

.sub.13 set.sub.-- somVPObjectKey method.

Next, the extension language environment is initialized for the language which is chosen (REXX, Digitalk Parts, etc.) by using the following method: .sub.13 set.sub.-- somVPExtLangEnv.

The extension language environment attribute should be initialized with the environment object corresponding to the chosen scripting language. Referring now to FIG. 6, the execution or triggering of a script action object will be described. The source object is passed to the trigger operation as a parameter. The target object and macro are state variables of the script action object. The target object is searched for each global variable in the macro or script action object by sending the lookUpAttr message to the target object. If the search is successful, the attribute object is added to the global variable object. If the search is not successful, a search is made of the source object. Again, if the search is successful, the attribute object is added to the global variable object. If the search of the source object is not successful, and integer attribute object for the named global variable is created and added as an attribute object to the target object. On a successful search, the getType message is sent to determine attribute type. If the global variable is on the right side of the assignment statement, the attribute object value is found by sending either getlntAttrValue; getRealAttrValue; getStringAttrValue; or getObjectAttrValue depending on the type of the attribute object. If the global value is on the left side of the assignment statement, the attribute value is assigned by using one of the following commands depending on the attribute type: setIntAttrValue; setRealAttrValue; setStringAttrValue; setObjectAttValue. An attribute object may be added to the inset as follows: An attribute object is created and a name is set by sending the setName message; next, the value is set by sending the setIntAttrValue message; setRealAttrValue message; setStringAttrValue message; or setObjectAttrValue message. Next, the attribute object is added to the inset by sending the addAttr message (see FIG. 6B). An attribute object may be obtained from the inset by the following:

Send lookUpAttr message to the inset with the attribute name as the input parameter;

Search the inset symbol table to find the named attribute. If it is found, the attribute object is returned otherwise there is a null return.

The type of the attribute object is then found by sending the getAttrType message. The value of the attribute object is then obtained by sending one of the following messages depending on the message type found above: getIntAttrValue message; getRealAttrValue message; getStringAttrValue message; or getObjectAttrValue message.

The inset is essentially a dictionary that holds attribute objects which can hold any value with an integer, real, string or object type. The usage of such a dictionary to represent application objects makes objects extendible.

Thus, objects can be created with an initial state and their initial state can change during execution by changing the values of the existing variables or adding new variables. This type of representation is convenient to customize the default behavior of an application object through action object execution. Insets can be saved or restored as follows:

Save the number of attributes on an external storage medium for each attribute in the dictionary as follows:

Serialize the attribute object by sending the externalized self message. The externalized self message returns the contents of the attribute object as an encoded string. This string representation is saved on the external medium.

To restore the inset, the following steps are taken:

Read the number of attributes from the external medium. Read the string representation of the attribute object. Decode the string and extract the values needed to initialize the attribute object. Create an attribute object and initialize values from the values in the preceding step. Add the attribute object to the inset.

The contents of the inset dictionary can be changed by using dictionary editors directly or using script action objects indirectly. Both extension language environment and dictionary editor environment use the same application programming interfaces to add, get or update the attributes in the inset dictionary.

Also, an attribute action in the inset may be updated by the following:

Get the attribute object from the inset; and set its value by sending one of the following messages: setlntAttrValue, setRealAttrValue, setStringAttrValue, or setObjectAttrValue.

The script action object provided is a general script action object that can be used to interpret an arbitrary scripting language. The interface definition and implementation files are provided in the script.idl and script.c files which follow this description. "SOMVPSCRIPT" class has an attribute called SOMVPEXTLANGENV", and it inherits "SOMVPTARGET" and "SOMVPOBJECTKEY" attributes from its parents.

When a script action object is triggered through the action slot mechanism, the script is interpreted by the following technique (refer now to FIG. 7): The target, script and extension language environment values are retrieved by using appropriate get value messages. Next, the script is translated by calling the "somVPExtsom Translate Script"method. Next, the script is executed by calling the "somVPExtsomExecute" interface. The script execution interface is defined as follows:

somVPExtsomExecute (imsomVPextmethode object code, in som VPdictionary source, in somVPdictionary target);

The source and target objects are passed by the action object to the scripting environment. The global variables in the script are searched first in the source dictionary, and if not found, they are searched in the target dictionary. The somVPdictionary class defines access or modification for the global variables.

This type of context management is independent of scripting language environments.

Refering now to FIG. 8, an example of support for a specific scripting language (REXX) will be shown.

Since the methods defined in somVPExtLang, somVPExtMethod, and somVPExtActivation classes are abstract, they must be overridden to provide a language specific implementation in the subclass. Therefore, the abstract class somVPExtLang is overridden by subclassing a language specific method OREXXExtLang, the abstract class somVPExtMethod is overridden by OREXXExtMethod, and the abstract somVPExtActivation is overridden by the implementation subclass OREXXExtActivation.

The definitions and routines set forth in Appendix A are used to implement a language independent context management technique in accordance with the present invention.

Although the present invention and its advantages have been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. ##SPC1##

Claims

1. An information handling system for executing application programs having one or more objects, comprising:

a processor for executing one or more application programs under the control of an operating system;

a memory, associated with said processor, for storing said operating system, said application programs, and said objects;

a display subsystem for providing a user interface and for displaying representations of said objects;

a cursor control device for selecting and triggering one or more of said objects;

said objects comprising action objects wherein each said action object includes one or more scripts, each such script being written in one of a plurality of languages, each of said plurality of languages having an extension language attribute;

means for initializing an extension language attribute for each of said plurality of languages used in an action object script; and

means for interpreting said action object scripts independent of a language in which said scripts are written.

2. A system, according to claim 1, wherein one or more of said action objects are script action objects.

3. A system, according to claim 2, further comprising:

means for creating a script action object.

4. A method for executing application programs having one or more objects, comprising:

executing one or more application programs, in a processor, under the control of an operating system;

storing, in a memory, said operating system, said application programs, and said objects;

displaying, on a display device, representations of said objects;

selecting one or more of said objects employing a cursor control device;

creating one or more action objects from said selected objects;

initializing an extension language attribute for each of a plurality of languages used in an action object; and

interpreting said action object scripts in accordance with a language associated with said extension language attribute.

5. A method, according to claim 4, further comprising the steps of:

saving a state of a persistence class on termination of processing said application program; and

restoring the saved state of said persistence class on a subsequent initiation of processing of said application program.

6. A method, according to claim 4, further comprising the step of:

creating a subclass action object.

7. A method, according to claim 4, further comprising the step of:

interpreting said action objects independent of any of said program languages.

8. A method, according to claim 7, wherein said step of interpreting further comprises the steps of:

retrieving script object and extension language environment values;

translating data in said script object; and

executing said script object.

9. A method, according to claim 8, wherein said step of interpreting further comprises the steps of:

defining an script execution interface; and

executing said script execution interface in association with one or more persistent objects.

10. A method, according to claim 4, wherein said initializing step further comprises the step of:

establishing an implementation subclass for extension language, extension method and extension activation for a selected program language.

11. A method for executing a language independent action object, comprising the steps of:

passing a source object as a parameter to a trigger operation;

searching a target object for one or more global variables;

adding each global variable found by said searching step to a global variable object;

creating an integer attribute object for a global variable, if no global variable is found by said searching step;

adding said integer attribute object to said target as an attribute object;

determining attribute type, for said attribute object, if said searching step finds one or more global variables;

determining a value for said attribute object; and

adding an attribute object to an inset.

12. A method according to claim 11, wherein said step of adding an attribute object to an inset comprises the steps of:

storing said attribute object in an extendible dictionary of attribute objects.