(responding to Les Munday)

<snip> (I'm assuming you all saw the original post)

Probably the key issue here (there are other minor issues)
is the separation of the event being sent to an object and
the response the object chooses to make on receipt of
this event.

Conceptually, an object generating an event does not know
how the receiving object will respond.  It is reasonable for the
sending object to know what role the receiving object is
fulfilling within its own (sender) context, and thus the sender
has some (possibly very restricted) idea of the recipient's
responsibilities.

In the purest form of Event passing, an object may receive
an event to which it does not know how to respond.  Rose
doesn't handle this possibility very well, and I don't have
any good work-rounds (but then I've never needed any).

All other work-rounds are based on the equation of the
operation name and the event name, leaving it up to the
users of the model to 'understand' what is meant.

Typically, this requires some negotiation at design time
between the event sender and the event recipient as to the 
meaning of the event and hence the operation name.
This can be circumvented by placing tailored adaptors
in all places where the meaning to sender and meaning
to recipient differ.  More commonly, some flexibility is
sacrificed and the 'meaning' is warped to fit the particular
circumstance, thereby giving the sender some inkling
of what the recipient is likely to do in response.

Use of 'Role' interfaces is a good way to limit the bad
effects.  In a collaboration, each object has collaborators
acting in different Roles.  Any object that implements the
interfaces and fills the delegated responsibilities can
act in the Role.  Here the Role interface 'talks' in terms
of the meaning to the sender, while the implementor
of the interface can convert calls to this interface into 
operations 'talking' in terms of its own meaning.  Role
interfaces are basically formalised adaptors as
mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I realise this only scratches the surface of the topic,
but I hope it helps.

Paul Oldfield

any opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of
Mentors of Cally


************************************************************************
* Rose Forum is a public venue for ideas and discussions.
* For technical support, visit http://www.rational.com/support
*
* Admin.Subscription Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Archive of messages: http://www.rational.com/support/usergroups/rose/rose_forum.jsp
* Other Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
* To unsubscribe from the list, please send email
*
* To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Subject:<BLANK>
* Body: unsubscribe rose_forum
*
*************************************************************************

Reply via email to