From specification to management of composite object behavior

Many object-oriented systems provide composite objects to represent and manipulate objects having a complex structure. But only few systems provide adapted means to capture the behavior of composite objects. Nonetheless, managing the global behavior of composite objects is a complicated task which encompasses several aspects: the collaboration of the behavior of the composite object with that of its components, the management of its semantic integrity and the evolution of its behavior. Based on this taxonomy, a model is proposed for the specification, the representation and the management of the global behavior of composite objects.