Future directions for the PCTE/OMS - achieving a fully object-oriented data model

Investigations on object management for software development environments have shown that object-orientation is a promising way to overcome the problems of highly integrated software development environments. In this paper we present an object-oriented extension to the well-known and internationally standardized PCTE (Portable Common Tool Environment) object management system (OMS). This way the current PCTE OMS, which belongs to the class of structurally object-oriented database systems, is enhanced to adopt a fully object-oriented data model. Our approach is focused on modelling behavior of objects and providing high-level types for supporting fine grained objects. We also investigate the solutions to the problems that result from the special characteristics of PCTE and discuss the mappings from the high-level types to the PCTE data model.