The Directory Facility

The schema dir contains the generic class Directory<sos_Object> which implements a hierarchical Mapping from sos_Strings to objects. It is used to build up a hierarchical structure, by inserting instances of class Directory in other instances of this class.

So, the type Directory enables a structuring of the data that is comparable to the directory hierarchy in file systems. To support this usage, a lookup method is available that accepts a UNIX-like pathname, i.e. names of intermediary directory objects separated by `/' characters. This function returns the corresponding object, if valid directory names were used.

The class Directory is of eminent importance for the usage of the SOS system, for it enables the access to all objects stored in the database by providing a static method root() which yields the SOS root object.

For a detailed description of class Directory refer to Appendix .