Design Documentation for MOZ (Moo in OZ).

Design Documentation for MOZ (Moo in OZ).

This is the design documentation for MOZ (Moo in OZ). MOO is Mud Object Oriented. MUD is Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension. In general, a MUD is a multi-user text-based virtual environment. For information on MUDs in general, see The MUD Resource Collection or your local search engine. For information on MOOs, see The MOO-Cows FAQ.

Oz is a multi-paradigmatic language that happens not to suck. See The Main Mozart-Oz Page.

Note that the requirements document is also incorporated herein, and that this document is changing in response to actual code decisions, and hence is not strictly a design document. Oh well.

• Requirements: An informal requirements specification. Normally this would be a seperate document, but I wanted to be able to refer back to the requirements as appropriate.
• Security Overview: MOZ uses capability security, which flies in the face of what most people think they know about security issues, especially people used to MOOs, even though the concepts are quite intuitive. A basic description is given here, with URLs to longer explications.

This section is first because otherwise the reader is likely to get confused later.

• One-Instance Classes: There are a number of classes that are instantiated exactly once per MOZ server. They are listed here, along with brief notes as to the sort of information they store.
• Ex-DB Design: MOZ doesn't have much in the way of ex-db code, unless you count the Oz language itself. What it does have is detailed here.
• Class Definitions: Description of the core classes.
• Storage Issues: The Storage class is a one-instance class, and is complicated and important enough to deserve its own section.
• MOZ Records: The Oz record type is used in the MOZ code fairly frequently. In some cases the format of those records is quite important, and needs to be understood to write new classes. Those records are discussed in detail here.
• Security In Detail: Security in MOZ is capability-based, and hence rather different than every other MUD I'm aware of. Please try to forget everything you know about security before reading this section.
• Unsorted: Point-form notes that haven't been fully fleshed out.