name_method is the name of a plsql function that will
return a human-readable name for an object of that type with a
specified object_id. It's called by
acs_object.name(), so
you can for example
select object_id,acs_object.name(object_id) from acs_objects
and get human understandable names without having to know
what type of objects you're dealing with or how they're named.
one example of this is /permissions/ which needs to
display object names that make at least some sense to
people, but has no need to have any in-depth understanding of
the objects it's assigning permissions to.
as for abstract_p, I was under the impression that it
was a wart left over from the original design of the acs4 object
model, and isn't actually used for anything. ISTR that it was
meant to flag object types that would never be instantiated, just
derived from. (but take that with a grain of salt - I haven't looked at
that in a while)
