3 speakers will present their work on "Persistency and Smalltalk". BSUG vzw will also officially announce its official status as a non-profit organization by Belgian law.

We welcome you for a drink after the presentations. This drink will be offered by BSUG vzw and its official sponsors Cincom, hIghQ, IBM, and Roots.

Be sure not to miss this educational and informative event on the world's most productive development environment: Smalltalk!

Persistency in VisualWorks

MediaGeniX is a provider of software systems for broadcast management. The software systems deployed at many television stations in Europe are build as instantiations of a common framework created using VisualWorks Smalltalk. The application of state-of-the-art software engineering techniques - for instance framework technology - plays a strategic role in our business to achieve this goal. To cope with the different persistency requirements at multiple television stations and still benefit from the possibilities of reuse, a small framework was set up using a standard product (Lens) to acces a relational database from within Smalltalk, in combination with the application of some design patterns. This talk will elaborate on this persistency architecture and the experiences with it up to now.

De technische architectuur van een persistentie framework

Deze presentatie is gebaseerd op de in huis ontwikkeling van een eigen persistentie framework in VisualWorks Smalltalk. De presentatie start met een korte inleiding over de object persistentie problematiek in het algemeen. Vervolgens wordt er dieper ingegaan op een aantal technische aspecten die het ontwerp van een persistentie framework beïnvloeden. Naast de "klassieke" object/relationele mapping komen ook meer geavanceerde topics als transactionele integriteit, locking, concurrency en toegang tot niet relationele gegevensbronnen aan bod. We eindigen met de achilleshiel van persistentie frameworks: performance.

The Argo Application

In this talk we present a meta-driven, reflective object-oriented framework. We use the framework to build applications in administrative environments. These applications share a common business model, and typically require a mix of database, document management and workflow functionality.

The framework uses a repository to store meta-information about end-user applications. This includes object model, object behavior, constraints, specifications of application environments (initial views on the shared model), query screens, layout definitions of overview lists and forms, authorization rules, workflow process templates and event-condition-action rules. Fully operational end-user tools consult this meta-information at run-time, and adapt themselves dynamically to the application specifications in the database. Thus we effectively separate specifications of a particular organizations business model from the generic functionality offered by the end-user tools. Rather than coding or generating code, we develop end-user applications by building increasingly complete specifications of the business model. These specifications are available for immediate execution.

In the first part of the talk we introduce the framework concepts. In the second part we address several issues related to the persistence component, which plays a crucial factor in supporting this dynamic, repository-based application (development) environment.

• Persistency in Smalltalk, Wilfried Verachtert
  Presentation not available
• Corporate Development Methodology Framework (VisualAge), Karel Haeck
  PPT
• The Argo Application, Michel Tilman
  PPT
  Papers are avaible on http://users.pandora.be/michel.tilman/Resume/Publications/publications.html
• Official Announcement of the BSUG vzw, David Grietens
  PPT