Object nets and object trees

Summary

• v3 artefacts, when used in a messaging context, are object trees. When one persists these in a RIMBAA application all objects that share one and the same id are 'merged' into one single object. A stack of trees where objects interconnect based on their shared identity is an object net. Object nets have different characteristics than object trees, e.g. in areas such as context conduction, querying of object net subsets, and object versioning.

Related: Context Conduction in cyclic RIM graphs

Analysis

• Ewout has taken the action item to write an analysis.

• In a real-world scenario one might assign more 'weight' to certain information from certain senders. Or to ignore 'demographics' sent by a Laboratory application. But then again: if the lab sends me stuff about a new patient (i.e. one unknown to me) it may be a best practice to import whatever demographics the lab is sending me. Or the receiver could decide to query the MPI for full details. But all of the above requires contextual knowledge (which senders are masters for what category of information) on the part of the object store.

• When it comes to the identity of objects: two objects can be identical (same identity), or equal (same value).

• See also these articles on the merging of object trees: [1]

example

Below an example of three different object trees. The rectangles represent object instances, the labels (A, B, etc.) the business identifiers of the objects. Some objects don't have an identifier. M1 is a directed graph, serialized using starting point B. M2 is serialized using F as its starting point, M3 using G.

Upon receipt of these three structures the receiver will 'merge' the information about one and the same object. Objects A, B and F appear in multiple object trees.

Note that the resulting object net is a directed graph, where links may be bidirectional in nature. Given the directed graphs (the object trees: M1, M2, M3) the object net, G links to B, and B links to F, but F doesn't link to B.

Merging based on known model constraints

Trigger Events and snapshot mode

TE object tree.PNG

Discussion

• Rene: this is again related to the issue of identity of objects.