| 摘要 |
A method and system for managing metadata for use by client application programs is disclosed. The client application programs are constructed with various software modules responsible for displaying graphical user interface components to users through a display module, e.g., computer monitor. The graphical user interface components are built using program data and metadata. Program data is data that is entered by a user or generated by a client application program. Metadata is data that describes the program data. The present invention manages metadata using a tri-layer system, which includes a presentation layer, a middle-tier layer and a data layer. The presentation layer includes the client application program, and therefore various software modules used to execute the client application program. The presentation layer also includes an ObjectStore component for managing retrieval and manipulation of metadata for the software modules. Software modules send requests for a metadata object to the ObjectStore component. The ObjectStore component works with the middle-tier layer to extract the requested metadata object from the data layer. The presentation layer, the middle-tier layer and the data layer may reside on a single computer or on multiple computers, such as the case in a client-server environment. |
