Research and development on database management techniques for Navy message address are herein proposed in answer to the Navy requirements for a computerized, speedy, dynamic, network phone book. An object-oriented database approach is taken to build the phone book based on an existing DBMS product DB VISTA. Such a tree-like database structure permits the user-defined attribute type and facilitates conversion of distinguished user names into network addresses. The tradeoff of different network architectures (centralized, distributed or hybrid) leads to the proposed software components of an user agent and service agent for a flexible phone book installation. In a system design document we suggest six modules for the whole phone book system. A Phase I prototype supporting a centralized environment, consists of a programming interface, the phone book engines, and a portion of the service agent.
