ericco@ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric C. Olson) (01/08/91)
Let's see, I know what OO is, and I know what DB is, and I can even imagine what OODB is. But, I really don't know what OODB refers to. Can some one post an example of OODB code. Are there any useful references on line somewhere? Thanks, Eric -- Eric ericco@ssl.berkeley.edu
andy@coma.cs.tu-berlin.de (Andreas Lampen) (01/08/91)
In article <ERICCO.91Jan7163648@sdaf1.ssl.berkeley.edu> ericco@ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric C. Olson) writes: >Let's see, I know what OO is, and I know what DB is, and I can even >imagine what OODB is. But, I really don't know what OODB refers to. OODB (or OODBMS) stand for "Object Oriented Database Management System", that's for sure. But I suspect there is no common understanding of what an Object Oriented Database Management System is. There is a whole scale of Databases referred to as OODBs. On the lower side of the scale are Databases that are suitable as data repository for object oriented applications but do *not* feature an object oriented data model. On the upper side are Databases with fully object oriented data modeling and data manipulation. The problem on the lower side of the scale is, where to draw the line ? I often have the impression that there are a number of databases around that are referred to as "object oriented" just because the designers succeeded in writing an object oriented application using it. An object oriented alibi application does not make a database really object oriented. I personally think, that a OODB must have an object oriented data modeling and manipulation language. The perhaps best known example for a *real* OODB is GemStone (by Servio Logic Corporation, Beaverton,OR). GemStone's database language is "OPAL", an object oriented language developed after the Smalltalk philosophy. OPAL is a general programming language also used for data definition and data manipulation. Other examples for OODBs are Orion (MCC, Austin,TX), Iris (Hewlett Packard), and O2 (GIP Altair, France). Andy -- Andy Lampen, Tech. Univ. Berlin -- andy@coma.cs.tu-berlin.de