Introduction to RDBMS, OODBMS and ORDBMS - Characteristics of Object-Oriented Databases in Depth
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Object-oriented database technology is a marriage of object-oriented programming and database technologies. Figure 1 illustrates how these programming and database concepts have come together to provide what we now call object-oriented databases.
Perhaps the most significant characteristic of object-oriented database technology is that it combines object-oriented programming with database technology to provide an integrated application development system. There are many advantages to including the definition of operations with the definition of data. First, the defined operations apply ubiquitously and are not dependent on the particular database application running at the moment. Second, the data types can be extended to support complex data such as multi-media by defining new object classes that have operations to support the new kinds of information.
Other strengths of object-oriented modeling are well known. For example, inheritance allows one to develop solutions to complex problems incrementally by defining new objects in terms of previously defined objects. Polymorphism and dynamic binding allow one to define operations for one object and then to share the specification of the operation with other objects. These objects can further extend this operation to provide behaviors that are unique to those objects. Dynamic binding determines at runtime which of these operations is actually executed, depending on the class of the object requested to perform the operation. Polymorphism and dynamic binding are powerful object-oriented features that allow one to compose objects to provide solutions without having to write code that is specific to each object. All of these capabilities come together synergistically to provide significant productivity advantages to database application developers.
A significant difference between object-oriented databases and relational databases is that object-oriented databases represent relationships explicitly, supporting both navigational and associative access to information. As the complexity of interrelationships between information within the database increases, so do the advantages of representing relationships explicitly. Another benefit of using explicit relationships is the improvement in data access performance over relational value-based relationships.
A unique characteristic of objects is that they have an identity that is independent of the state of the object. For example, if one has a car object and we remodel the car and change its appearance, the engine, the transmission, and the tires so that it looks entirely different, it would still be recognized as the same object we had originally. Within an object-oriented database, one can always ask the question, “is this the same object I had previously?”, assuming one remembers the object’s identity. Object-identity allows objects to be related as well as shared within a distributed computing network.
All of these advantages point to the application of object-oriented databases to information management problems that are characterized by the need to manage:
- a large number of different data types,
- a large number of relationships between the objects, and
- objects with complex behaviors.
Application areas where this kind of complexity exists includes engineering, manufacturing, simulations, office automation and large information systems.
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