FRAMEWORK FOR OBJECT-ORIENTED ACCESS TO NON-OBJECT-ORIENTED DATASTORES

A method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for accessing non-object-oriented data using object-oriented techniques. A computerized system in accordance with the principles of the present invention includes a "bridge" that interfaces between an application program and a non-object-oriented database management system to materialize data retrieved from the non-object-oriented database management system as objects that can be manipulated by the application program. The bridge includes a "collection of object collections" for modeling hierarchical structures, a datastore collection made up of one or more datastore persistent objects, and an instance manager. A datastore class definition tool generates class definitions for datastore persistent objects that encapsulate or wrapper the data retrieved from the non-object-oriented database management system.