Office-by-example: an integrated office system and database manager

The facilities and architecture of the OBE system are described and the techniques for integrating heterogeneous objects are discussed, including example elements, which were discussed in this paper.

Abstract

Office-by-Example (OBE) is an integrated office information system that has been under development at IBM Research. OBE, an extension of Query-by-Example, supports various office features such as database tables, word processing, electronic mail, graphics, images, and so forth. These seemingly heterogeneous features are integrated through a language feature called example elements . Applications involving example elements are processed by the database manager, an integrated part of the OBE system. In this paper we describe the facilities and architecture of the OBE system and discuss the techniques for integrating heterogeneous objects.