In the intro, we cleared the database of all classes. There must be a root to the hierarchy, so the root Object was created with an id of one.

To view the Object Hierarchy, from the main page select the Object Table link. The view will only contain one object, which should look like the following:

1

- This indicates the object is a class. The other type of object is an instance, indicated by . Consider a class to be a general group, such as dogs. An instance would be a specific dog, such as your neighbors dog that constantly wanders into your yard.

1 - This is the object id. Each object will contain a unique id that is assigned by the system when it is created.

- This icon will show the edit screen that will allow the user to edit attributes and link this object to other objects.

- This icon will create a new class with all of the same attributes and links as this class. The icon is a green circle pointing to another green circle, which means the class will create another class.

- This icon will create a new instance with all of the same attributes and links as this class. An instance cannot be subclassed or instantiated. The icon is a green circle pointing to purple green circle, which means the class will create an instance.

Now, lets create our new classes, person and animal. Press the subclass icon on the root object. This will update the page to display the newly created object. When the page reappears, press the same sublcass icon on the root object. This should create two new subclasses of the root object. The view should now look like the following:

1
     1001
     1002

To put all of this in perspective, our example sentence is John has a dog. What we have done is create two classes, a person to hold John, and animal which will contain the dog that John owns. Since the Object Hierachy is how the Fido system stores information, we need to set up these place holders.

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