(12) United States Patent ao) Patent No.: us 6,763,361 Bi
Poskanzer (45) Date of Patent: Jul. 13,2004
(54) OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE ABSTRACTION AND STATEMENT GENERATION
(75) Inventor: Harold Poskanzer, Palo Alto, CA (US)
(73) Assignee: Opsware, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US)
( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 113 days.
(21) Appl. No.: 09/699,348
(22) Filed: Oct. 31, 2000
(51) Int. CI.7 G06F 17/30
(52) U.S. CI 707/103 R; 707/104.1
(58) Field of Search 707/1, 4, 10, 104.1,
707/102, 103 R; 716/11
(56) References Cited
U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS
5,937,409 A * 8/1999 Wetherbee 707/103 R
6,061,689 A 5/2000 Chang et al 707/103 R
6,073,129 A 6/2000 Levine et al 707/4
6,249,903 Bl * 6/2001 McSherry et al 716/11
6,279,008 Bl 8/2001 Tung Ng et al 707/102
6,366,921 Bl * 4/2002 Hansen et al 707/103
* cited by examiner
An interface provides a level of abstraction between the structure of a database system and application programs which access that system. The database system is represented by a model comprised of objects which correspond to the components of the database system. An object at a higher level encapsulates information contained in these other objects regarding the structure of the database. Whenever an application program requires access to the database, it sends a message to the higher level encapsulation object. The lower-level objects implement methods which automatically generate appropriate database commands. When the encapsulation object receives a call from an application program requesting data in the database, it instructs table objects to obtain the required data. In response, the table objects invoke field objects to identify how to represent data in each of the database fields to which they correspond. The table object concatenates the responses received from each of the field objects to construct a command that is presented to the database to retrieve the desired data.
13 Claims, 3 Drawing Sheets
