How This Book Is Organized

This book is a subset of the SOMobjects Developer Toolkit Users Guide for the full-capability SOMobjects Developer Toolkit. The omitted chapters describe capabilities not included with the SOMobjects Base Toolkit. Chapters that are included appear in their entirety, as written for the full-capability SOMobjects systems, except for some references to capabilities not included in the SOMobjects Base Toolkit.

• Introducing the SOMobjects Developer Toolkit provides an overview of the major elements of SOM.

• Tutorial for Implementing SOM Classes contains a Tutorial with five evolutionary examples that illustrate techniques for implementing classes in SOM. All readers should cover this tutorial.

• Using SOM Classes in Client Programs describes how an application program creates instances of a SOM class, how it invokes methods, and so on. For readers interested only in using SOM classes, rather than building them, chapters 2 and 3 may provide all of the information they need to begin using SOM classes.

• SOM IDL and the SOM Compiler contains explanations and examples for all valid SOM IDL syntax components, it then presents the SOM Compiler, including all compiler options and related environment variables. All class implementors will need to reference this chapter.

• Implementing Classes in SOM provides more comprehensive information about the SOM system itself, including operation of the SOM run-time environment, inheritance, and method resolution. This chapter also describes how to create language-neutral class libraries using SOM. In addition, it contains some advanced topics for customizing SOM to better suit the needs of a particular application. All class implementors will need to reference this chapter.

• Distributed SOM (DSOM) describes Distributed SOM and how to use it to access objects across address spaces, even on different machines. This chapter also describes how to customize DSOM. Note that SOMobjects Base Toolkit supports only Workstation DSOM (distribution among processes on a single machine), whereas SOMobjects Developer Toolkit also supports Workgroup DSOM (distribution among a network of machines).

• SOM Interface Repository Framework describes the Interface Repository Framework of classes supplied with the SOMobjects Toolkit.

• Metaclass Framework describes the Metaclass Framework and some utility metaclasses that SOM provides to assist users in deriving new classes with special abilities to execute "before" and "after" operations when a method call occurs, as well as other capabilities for modifying the default semantics of method invocation and object creation.

• Event Management Framework describes the Event Manager Framework, which allows grouping of all application events and waiting on multiple events in one place. The Event Manager is used by DSOM.

• SOMobjects Error Codes contains lists of the error codes and messages that can be issued by the SOM kernel or by the various frameworks.

• SOM IDL Language Grammar contains the SOM IDL language grammar.

• Implementing Sockets Subclasses describes how to subclass a "Sockets" class that facilitates inter-process communications required by the DSOM, Replication, and Event Management Frameworks.

• A glossary and an index conclude this programming guide.