Efficiency of qualified name accesses.
Kurt Stirewalt ([email protected])
Wed, 7 Jun 1995 08:42:42 -0400
In order to implement the mtf backend I had to formulate some primitives that
evaluate a qualified name list like:
Generate_Report.subtask_connection.subtasks.Specify_account
down to an object that could be filled in with attributes. In order to do this
through the current API, we have to make a number of calls through
CORBA. Spencer suggested that perhaps this functionality would be better
implemented entirely in the server in order to minimize this efficiency loss.
Seeing as how this is something we'll be doing a lot in the MTF parser
does it make sense to extend the object system API to denote objects by
qualified names? I think it would be a delicate extension because a qualified
name list like the example given above would mean two different things
depending upon context. If it appeared on the left hand side of an assignment,
then we would want to think of the object:
Generate_Report.subtask_connection
with attribute:
subtasks
which is a collection, and we want to assign an object to the name:
Specify_account
If it appeared on the right hand side (in an expression for example), then
we would want to think of the object:
Generate_Report.subtask_connection.subtasks.Specify_account
I came up with a solution to this problem for the MTF back end. Is there any
interest in integrating it into the object system itself?
-- kurt.