Smart objects for development of object oriented software

An interactive software development environment for development of an object oriented application with selected structure comprising:

• a plurality of objects of at least first and second types, said objects containing a body of source code common to each of said objects;
• a plurality of links of at least first and second types, said links operative to interconnect said objects;
• an advisor capable of querying said objects for lists of desired links to support and which can provide suggestions as to links to make;
• and
• an advisor operative to provide a notice of detected logical errors in the structure of the application, error detection being based upon interconnection of said objects and said links, said advisor providing notice of any detected missing link prior to testing said application.

A method for creating a database management application with a user interface builder comprising the steps of:

• creating at least one instance of an object;
• checking that each object is valid;
• querying each object to determine how the object should be linked to other objects;
• allowing each object to determine how the attributes of that object should be initialized;
• automatically creating an underlying structure to recreate the object and operational behavior of the object prior to compiling;
• connecting a link to the object;
• choosing a link source and a link target;
• querying the object to be connected for a list of supported links;
• merging the list of supported links with a predefined list;
• and
• matching, where the object is being connected to a second object with a list of supported links, the list of links supported by the object with the list of links supported by the second object.

An object-oriented programming environment for creation of database management applications with a plurality of predefined objects comprising:

• a navigation object which provides navigational messages;
• a tableIO object which provides record-manipulation messages;
• a paging object which provides visualization of unique pages of objects;
• a query object which provides database records;
• a viewer object which facilitates presentation of data fields and forms;
• a browser object which facilitates presentation of tabular data in rows and columns;
• and
• a container object capable of containing other said navigation, tableIO, paging, query, viewer and browser objects,
• wherein said predefined objects each include the capability to initialize and destroy themselves.