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From: marc@eiffel.UUCP (Jean-Marc Nerson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: ENVIRONMENT class
Summary: environments, persistent objects
Message-ID: <450@eiffel.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 90 01:17:23 GMT
References: <90.298.10:48:31@ira.uka.de> <1990Nov9.162241.28128@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA
Lines: 28

In article <1990Nov9.162241.28128@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>, giacomet@venus.ecn.purdue.edu (Frederic B Giacometti) writes:

>It seems than objects can be stored in an environment object with or
>without a key (put for the latter, open/Create/close for the former).

	Objects (and all their dependents objects) simply ``belong'' 
	to an environment. They will only be stored 
	(with all their dependent objects) if they are
	made persistent with the `put' operation that requires a key.

>Still, it seems objects can be retrieved afterwards only using their key
>(item feature), hence losing access to the others (e.g., objects
>inserted during creation on an open environment).
>Isn't there a way to access these objects ? 

	Retrieved objects are those that were made persistent or
	that are reachable from a persistent object.
	
>A particularly useful
>feature would be the counterpart to count: a feature returning the list
>of stored objects matching a type...

	I agree with you. This feature is lacking.
	This is part of our working plans.


-- Jean-Marc Nerson
marc@eiffel.com