Object-Oriented Databases for Libraries and Other Complex Systems

If the author had been as creative as Debora Shaw (these proceedings), the title of this paper could have been "Libraries and Object-Oriented Database Systems, or When Do You Need an SST?" However clever the title, the intent of the following discussion is to examine some of the latest developments in database technology and to conjecture how they might be applied to information processing within the library world. The main new development that will be considered is an objectoriented database system. But other new developments will be addressed as well. Database systems and practice have developed to satisfy an organization's critical needs for operational data. A database management system (DBMS) is supposed to make it easy to share and protect vital data and information. The designers of such systems are charged to get all the right information into the system, make it easy for multiple sub-organizations to get at it and, yet, prevent the wrong eyes from seeing the parts of it they have no right to. DBMSs are further charged to make sure that a minimum of crucial information is ever lost by accident or disaster, or is destroyed by miscreants.published or submitted for publicatio