The ITHACA office object model

Abstract
This paper presents an object-oriented approach to modeling an office, including both its content and the activities that are carried out within it. This is a part of a larger research effort---the ITHACA Project (Integrated Toolkit for Highly Advanced Computer Applications). Its purpose is to provide software engineers and application programmers with a generic framework within which to develop large, distributed office support systems. The set of interrelated models contains: the active object, the passive object and the procedure models. The active object model represents persons (or actors), organizational structures and their linkages through roles. Office facilities (e.g., cabinets, tables, tops-of-desks, wastebaskets) and information (e.g., documents, letters) are captured by the passive object model. The relationships among the various objects are expressed by both specified relationship attributes and other attributes that can be derived from them. The procedure model consists of office operators (e.g., Move, Edit, Create, Send) that are used as basic building blocks for defining office procedures.The model is presently being used to develop software for the ITHACA Project. A prototype of the active office object model has been developed, written in CooL---Combined object-oriented Language. The prototype will be used as a basis for developing a more complete systems architecture, also described in the paper.

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