Operators of the temporal object system and their implementation

We proposed a Temporal Object System (TOS) which maintains changes to both the structure and the state of an object in a temporal fashion (Shah, 1992; Fotouhi et al, 1992a; Fotouhi, et al, 1992b; Fotouhi, et al, 1994). Objects in TOS are referred to as temporal objects and are allowed to evolve over time. A collection of temporal objects which share the same set of common properties is grouped into a family. A temporal object that can be defined by using the local knowledge of a family is referred to as an offstage object (Shah et al, 1993a). We also discussed the renovations of both temporal complex objects and offstage objects in (Fotouhi et al, 1992; Shah et al, 1993a; Fotouhi et al, 1994). This paper is a continuation of the work reported in (Fotouhi et al, 1994), and now we report on the operators of the temporal object system (TOS) and their implementation. These operators are grouped into three different modules of the TOS based on their relevant functions. These modules are: Object Manager (or Object Module), Family Module, and Root of TOS (RTOS) Module. The important module is the Object Manager (OM) that consists of basic operators. The modules provide a facility for defining a simple temporal object and later to add a stage in the temporal object. The other operators are grouped into the two other modules and are