I've found the object system in acs4 to be a good start but only half complete. To make the attributes useful 4 things need to happen.
1. All the base objects need to have the correct attributes
2. The rapid prototype package needs to be fully functional
3. You need to be about to use objects inside other objects
4. The object system need to be integrated with the templating system
so you can auto generate user interfaces.
5. (optional) You should be able to generate/insert XML schema and documents from any acs object.
Lately I've been working on the last three and I should be done by the end of the month (with an oracle acs4.2 version). I'll see about packaging the stuff up and releasing it.
Once you can auto generate forms and mix data from multiple objects the pain of creating objects and attributes is overcome by what you can do with them. If the persmission system could be faster and extended to attributes things could really be interesting.
