Managed objects made persistent

This paper discusses the experience we gained by designing and implementing a persistent object extension to an existing TMN based network management system. The extension is based on the introduction of smart pointers and meta-classes using object-oriented principles. We show how the use of smart pointers minimises the impact on the existing system, thus heightening the level of transparency, and describe why smart pointers alone is not enough for storing objects in a persistent manner. The paper shows how concepts as pointer swizzling, meta-classes, attribute classes and incremental update are important in order to make a persistent object system.