Furthermore we saw the chance to demonstrate the benefits of our modelling methodology and a well designed object-oriented system architecture. The system's architecture has been designed in order to allow for widely abstracting from physical distribution. For this purpose we differenciate between semantic and presentation objects. Presentation objects provide the user interface. They have to be available on all desk top systems.
Semantic objects serve to describe the domain level concepts.
While in principle they may be distributed as well, they are usually managed in the central persistent object base. The system was implemented with VisualWorks and GemStone. The system is composed of various components. Once a component had been implemented it is introduced to the central component starter by using a predefined protocol. Since not all the users have the same rights to use the system, the component starter dynamically provides the users only with those services of a selected component they are authorized to use.