CORBA views: distributing objects with views

We propose a model for building object oriented applications based on the composition of application slices or fragments that provide their own overlapping definitions or expectations of the same domain objects. Different slices may implement different functional or implementation concerns, or embody different access rights and privileges to the same domain objects. We call such slices views and we recognize that the behavior embodied in views may be abstracted into generic class-like algebraic structures called viewpoints, from which views for specific domain classes may be generated. We are interested in the problem of distributing view based applications when different sites access different slices of the same domain objects. Specifically, we are interested in the problem of offering different views of the same domain objects to different client programs in a CORBA-like environment. We first discuss the principles behind view programming, and then explore ways in which objects with views may be distributed in a way that support's different sets of functionalities to different client programs. An interesting application of view programming in a distributed context is the selective duplication of object slices.