1.2 Object-Oriented Design

GroupWise Object API design is based on state-of-the-art object-oriented techniques and theory. Object API objects provide an organized representation of the GroupWise information store. An object contains the relevant properties (data) and the methods (functions) which manipulate the properties.

New objects may be defined without affecting older applications that are not aware of the new objects. Additional properties and methods may be added to the existing objects without changing the previous functionality of the object. Thus, new versions of the Object API are inherently backward compatible.

Any development tools that can access OLE Automation objects can be used to develop applications and obtain GroupWise information.

OLE Automation can manage collection objects defined in the Object API. A collection object is a special object that provides a uniform means of managing a number of objects of a given type.