http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~kristen/FORS..._OO_start.html
KW's distributed objects and OOP in large data base projects.
OOP in Beta
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~beta/books.html,
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~kristen/FORS...hovedside.html
is the next level of abstraction.
You can download the book free here:
ftp://ftp.daimi.au.dk/pub/beta/betabook/betabook.pdf
What was the intent of Simula? One aspect was to simulate reality.
So it is poosible to use people to simulate behaviour. Each person represent a class with properties and functionality. When persons interact in the play, the project is simplified and simulated.
This paper describes abstractions that have been designed to support distributed programming in the object oriented programming language BETA. The approach is minimalistic in the sense that a goal is to provide the essential building blocks on top of which other distribution related abstractions may be built. This goal is made easier by demanding for type orthogonal persistence and distribution as the full power of the underlying language may then be used when building higher level abstractions on top of the basic ones.
Download the paper in postscript here
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~beta/Papers/....abstract.html
(can be converted to PDF with Acrobat reader 7.0 Professional)
Related link:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/%7Ebeta/doc/f...guage-faq.html
In a nutshell, Beta is about minimalism, even if the language is very compact and a large project may be complex.
P.S. References in PHP 5.0 is more like references in Java and C++.
Even if PHP is interpreted, you may reduce load on your databaseserver by using Aggregation and / or Polymorphism. Read about it in chapter 2 and 3 in the Sitepoint book cited above.