Integrating a Database System and Programming/Information Environment

Abstract

Vast differences in terminology aside, there is considerable overlap between work in knowledge representation, programming language data types, and database models. Our current work on the Cedar programming environment has necessitated integrating a number of ideas in these areas. As part of the Cedar project in the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC, we have been constructing a database management system. The goal of the Cedar environment is to greatly increase our productivity by combining the best currently known principles from programming languages, programming tools, and user interfaces into a single integrated system. Cedar is based on the Mesa programming language [1]. The goal of our database subproject of Cedar is to provide a uniform prepackaged way to perform access to data structures, as contrasted to the current state of affairs in which Mesa programmers repeatedly re-invent the facilities we intend to provide to type, structure, index, link, robustly store, concurrently access, and cache data stored in the primary or secondary memory of one or more computers on a network.