Object Databases

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Unit 9
 Contents
• Relational DBMS
– Suitability, Complex Applications, Inadequacies
• Data Model Generations
• Types of Object Database
• Object Oriented Databases
– OQL
• Object Relational Databases
– SQL3
– Oracle
• Advantages and Disadvantages

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 Relational DBMS
Suitability
• Relational DBMS are suitable for certain
types of applications
– simple data types, e.g. dates, strings
– large number of instances, e.g. students,
employees
– well defined relationships between data, e.g.
student, course relationships
– short transactions, e.g. simple queries
• Most successful for business applications

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 Complex Applications
• CAD, CAM
– complex objects
– graphics
– a large number of types but few instances of each
type
– hierarchical design not static
• CASE
– software development lifecycle,
– co-operative engineering
– concurrent sharing of design
– code/documentation

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 Complex Applications
• Office Information and Multimedia Systems
– e-mail support
– documentation
– SGML documents
• Geographic Information Systems
– spatial and temporal information, e.g.
satellite/survey photos, maps
– pattern recognition

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 RDBMS Inadequacies
• Poor separation of ‘real world’ entities
– normalisation leads to entities that don’t
closely match real world
– joins costly
• Semantic overloading
– all data held as relationships
– no mechanism for differentiation between
entities and relationships

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 RDBMS Inadequacies
• Poor support for integrity and enterprise
constraints
– relational systems good for supporting referential,
entity and simple business constraints
– not good for more complex enterprise constraints
• Homogeneous data structure
– data pushed into rows and columns
– not all real world data can be organised in this way

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 RDBMS Inadequacies
• Limited operations
– SQL does not allow new operations to be defined
– e.g. select age from person;
• Difficulty handling recursive queries
– e.g. find all ancestors

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 RDBMS Inadequacies
• Impedance mismatch
– need to embed SQL to get computational
completeness
– data types in SQL and programming language don’t
match
• Concurrency, schema changes and poor
navigational access
– no support for long duration transactions
– difficult to change schema, e.g. add columns to a table
– RDBMS based on content based access

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 Data Models

1st Generation

{
Hierarchical

Network

2nd generation Relational

Entity-Relational

Semantic
3rd
generation Object-Relational Object-Oriented

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 Object-Oriented
Databases
• Object-Oriented Database
– e.g. ObjectStore, Objectivity
– based on OO programming techniques
– include concepts such as
• user extensible type system, complex objects,
encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, dynamic binding,
object identity
– ODMG standard being devised to define data model
and query language standard
• also defines interoperability between ODMG compliant
systems

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 OQL: Example ODL
Schema
class Student
(extent students)
{
attribute short id;
attribute string name;
attribute string address;
attribute date dob;
relationship set<Module> takes
inverse Module takenby;
short age();
};

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 OQL: Example ODL
Schema
class Module
(extent modules)
{
attribute string title;
attribute short semester;
relationship set<Student> takenby
inverse Student takes;
};

class Postgrad extends Student

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 Object Query
Language
• e.g. select distinct x.age
from Persons x
where x.name = “Pat”;

• Return literal of type set<struct>

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 OQL Examples
• Path Expressions
select c.address
from Persons p, p.children c
where p.address.street = “Main Street”
and count(p.children) >= 2
and c.address.city != p.address.city;
• Methods
select max(select c.age from p.children c)
from Persons p
where p.name = “Paul”;

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 Object-Relational
Databases
• Object-Relational Database
– e.g. Oracle 8, Postgres
– extend relational model with OO features
• e.g. polymorphism, complex objects, extensibility
– but keep relationally based
– SQL99 standard developed as an object-
relational version of SQL92

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 SQL99
• Row types
– a data type that can represent types of rows in tables
– e.g.
CREATE TABLE branch(
bno VARCHAR(3),
address ROW(
street VARCHAR(25),
town VARCHAR(15),
pcode ROW( city_id VARCHAR(4)
subpart VARCHAR(4))));
INSERT INTO branch
VALUES(‘B5’, (‘22 Deer Rd’, ‘Sidcup’, (‘SW1’, ‘4EH’)));

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 SQL99
• UDTs
– abstract data types
– consists of one or more attribute defns
• encapsulation supported
CREATE TYPE person_type AS (
PRIVATE
date_of_birth DATE CHECK(date_of_birth > DATE ‘1990-01-01’);
PUBLIC
fname VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
lname VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
FUNCTION get_age (P person_type) RETURNS INTEGER
RETURN /* code to calc age */
END; ...
END) NOT FINAL;

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 SQL99
• User defined routines (UDR)
– may be defined as part of a UDT or as part of a
schema
– can be a procedure, function or iterative routine
– Can be written in SQL or in an external
programming language

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 SQL99 Examples
• Querying
– uses SQL92 syntax with extensions to
handle objects
e.g.
SELECT s.lname, s.get_age SELECT p.lname, p.address
FROM staff s FROM person p
WHERE s.is_manager; WHERE p.get_age > 65;

SELECT p.lname, p.address

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 SQL99
• Reference Types and OID
– system generated, type REF
– Reference types can be used to define
relationships between row types
– reference types uniquely identify rows
– allows rows to be shared across tables
– complex joins can be replaced by simple path
expressions
– reference types do not provide referential integrity
• Collection types
– ARRAYs, LISTs, SETs, MULTISETs

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 SQL99
• Persistent Stored Modules
– SQL3 now computationally complete
– New statements added:
• Assignment
• IF .. THEN .. ELSE .. ENDIF, and CASE
• REPEAT BLOCKS
• CALL and RETURN for invoking procedures
• Condition handling
• Triggers
– Triggering events include insertion, deletion and
update of rows in a table

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 Oracle 8
• An object-relational extension to Oracle 7
• Object types can be used to create object tables with
object identifiers:
– attributes
– methods
• Does not support table hierarchies
• New types:
– VARRAYs and nested tables
– REFs
– LOBs

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 Object Database
Advantages
• Enriched modelling capabilities
– can model both state and behaviour
– models real world more naturally
• Extensibility
– ability to build new types and use in system
– abstract data types
• Removal of impedance mismatch
– single language interface between DML and
programming language
– computationally complete

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 Object Database
Advantages
• More expressive query language
– support for navigational queries
– support for methods
• Support for schema evolution
– tight coupling between data and applications
– generalisation, inheritance
• Support for long duration transactions
– RDBMS enforce serializability

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 Object Database
Advantages
• Applicability to advanced database
applications
– CAD, CAM, GIS, etc.
• Improved performance
– improved performance for engineering problems
– but different type of problem

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 Object Database
Disadvantages
• Lack of universal data model
– RDBs based on set theory
– OODBs lack theoretical basis
• Lack of experience
– limited use
– steep learning curve
– geared towards programmers rather than typical
users
• Lack of standards
– ODMG standard evolving for standard data model
and standard query language

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 Object Database
Disadvantages
• Query optimisation compromises
encapsulation
– need to break encapsulation to optimise queries
– e.g. access a private attribute to speed-up query
• Locking at object level may impact
performance
– e.g. locking large inheritance hierarchies
• Complexity
– expensive
– difficult to use
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 Object Database
Disadvantages
• Lack of support for views
– an important concept in RDBs
– provide customisable views of a database
• Lack of support for security
– no views
– coarse granularity
– difficult to grant access rights on individual
objects/classes

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 Object-Relational
Advantages
• Weaknesses of RDBMS
• Reuse and Sharing
– extending the DBMS server to perform standard
functionality centrally
– functionality shared by all applications
• Evolutionary rather than revolutionary
– SQL3 upwardly compatible with current SQL
standard

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 Object-Relational
Disadvantages
• Complexity and Associated Increased Costs
– simplicity and purity of relational model is lost
– majority of applications do not achieve optimal
performance
• Semantic gap between object-oriented and
relational
– OO applications not as data centric as Relational
• Objectives of Initial SQL standard were to
minimise user effort and be easy to learn
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 Why more than one
model?
• Stonebraker proposed a four quadrant view
of the database world:

Relational Object-
DBMS Relational
DBMS
Search capabilities/ File systems Object-
Oriented
multi-user support DBMS

Data complexity/extensibility

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 Summary
• More than one data model, but each model
good for particular types of application
• Each has its own advantages and
disadvantages
• Object-Relational DBMS are taking over
Relational DBMS in market place
– e.g. Oracle 8
• Object-Oriented still have their own niche

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 Further Reading
• Connelly and Begg, chapters 21-23
– a very good introduction to object-oriented and
object-relational databases
• Cattell, et. al. The Object Data Standard, 3rd
ed.
– Discusses the ODMG standard for object
databases

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 Further Reading
• Stonebraker, Object-Relational Databases:
The Next Great Wave
– written by the person who produced the first
object-relational database Postgres

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