OOFILE Manual

Installation Summary

Steps to installing OOFILE and the accompanying c-tree Plus package.

Quick Start

Quick guide to creating and using a database for people who know a bit about database concepts.

Field Types

The field types and operations, including standalone types such as oofDate that can be used without a database.

Searching

The different ways to declare a search, including combinatorial expressions, wildcards and how to optimise searches with indexed compound fields.

Sorting

A quick description of how sorting works in OOFILE, including multiple field sorts and the automatic dependency-based resorting.

Relationships

How relationships work between database classes (instead of plain C++ pointers) - an overview and details.  

ANSI Gotchas

IOStreams, the ANSI standard and Metrowerks CodeWarrior Pro

Debugging Techniques

How to use the OOF_Debug and OOF_SmartHeap #defines to ensure the safety of your database.

Gotchas

A list of a couple of minor problems that you can run into and the error messages likely to be seen. Running in OOF_Debug mode should help avoid or diagnose most mistakes you can make.

Database size limits

Just the limits on numbers of classes, indices etc.

Dependencies

Describes the general dependency mechanism in OOFILE which you can use for your own dependencies, as well as its use by dbTable and other classes.  

Miscellaneous details

A kind of grab-bag of our programming conventions, c++ concepts and a resource list for c++ programming, object-oriented design and other topics.

Multi-user issues

How the c-tree multi-user capabilities are used in OOFILE.

Cross-platform issues

A few minor issues in going cross-platform. Read this document to see how to get the most efficient space packing of your objects and to be sure that your database can be copied to other platforms.

c-tree Changes and Issues

A couple of minor c-tree source code changes are required for Mac programmers writing GUI applications, with c-tree prior to 6.7 (around 1997 vintage). Also describes how OOFILE makes use of c-tree features.  

Questions and Answers

Some interesting questions from user correspondence.  

OOFILE release test plan

The test plan followed in validating an OOFILE release.

Description as Patterns

Describes some OOFILE internals in terms of the GOF Patterns, and our own efforts.
(See "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides)

Package Overview

The different components of OOFILE.

Core database

Major database classes and backends.  

Persistent fields inheritance

Including some portions linked to a rough reference manual.  

GUI Integration classes

How OOFILE links your database to an application framework.

Description as Patterns

Describes some OOFILE internals in terms of the GOF Patterns, and our own efforts.
(See "Design Patterns" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides)

OOFILE over c-tree Plus

Summary of the main features OOFILE adds to enhance c-tree Plus.  

Comparison to the ODMG-93 Standard

Describes OOFILE features side by side with ODMG definitions and discusses some future compatability improvements.  

Small Software Engineering

The Diary-Driven approach we use to manage development.

AppMaker

Using the AppMaker code generator program on Macintosh and how OOFILE applications can be automatically generated for the PowerPlant framework.

GUI Integration Philosophy

The common philosophy to integrating OOFILE into application frameworks

GUI Events

Use Cases (from Jacobson) describe sequences of actions in a typical GUI database application.

GUI Customisation

The points at which you can easily customise gui integration behaviour by overriding virtual methods.

PowerPlant Framework

The (Macintosh) MetroWerks PowerPlant GUI integration, and the basis for our future GUI integrations.

A short reference to the basic commands for dealing with the database.

Quick Index

A short form of this index for quick referencing.

Class Reference Browser

Ever-improving, the automatically generated reference of all classes and methods in OOFILE.