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@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/vldb/Bancilhon93,
author = {Fran\c{c}ois Bancilhon},
editor = {Rakesh Agrawal and
Se{\'a}n Baker and
David A. Bell},
title = {Object Database Morphology},
booktitle = {19th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, August
24-27, 1993, Dublin, Ireland, Proceedings},
publisher = {Morgan Kaufmann},
year = {1993},
isbn = {1-55860-152-X},
pages = {693},
ee = {db/conf/vldb/Bancilhon93.html},
crossref = {DBLP:conf/vldb/93},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}
Object-oriented databases (OODBS) have been on the market for about 5 years now. The products have been quickly maturing. Production applications are being deployed in various areas:CAD, software engineering, geographic information systems, financial systems, medical information systems, telecommmunications (network administration) and multimedia.
The manifesto [Atkinson et al.] was written in 89 when the arguments about object databases were still very confusing and when the need for a number ofsimple and clear rules was obvious. It played a reasonable role: as pedagogicaltool, it allowed to teach, present and explain most of the important concepts. As a marketing tool it has been used by most vendors to claim compliance and present their product.
I have personally used it as teaching tool and found it adequate up to a point.It is a good tool for people who have to understand the concepts. It is not a good tool for people who want to understand what a system look like and how it is structured. I have noticed that when I reach the point where I present the functional architecture of a system, the audience has a problem matching the act ual 14 concepts with the architecture of the system.
Numerous questions arise, such as what happens to the DDL, what role is played by the query language, how does the system relate to C++, where should the methods be stored, etc. The goal of this presentation is to solve some of this confusion, it is thus purely pedagogical and contains no hard results. I try to classify the various elements of the data model and show in what sense classical data models have to be extended to fit the object oriented database paradigm. I present a generic object database architecture and show where the Object Definition Language and the Object Query Language fit. I distinguish between the use of internal and external languages for writing methods and applications and show how the mapping with the data model can be done.
Copyright © 1993 by the VLDB Endowment. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the VLDB copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by the permission of the Very Large Data Base Endowment. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or special permission from the Endowment.
