Object-Oriented Databases

Object-oriented databases result from the integration of database technology with the object-oriented paradigm developed in the programming languages and software engineering areas. They have been developed to meet the requirements imposed by applications characterized by highly structured data, long transactions, data types for storing images and texts, and nonstandard, application-specific operations. Examples of such applications, which have requirements and characteristics different from those typical of traditional database applications for business and administration, are design and manufacturing systems (CAD/CAM, CIM), scientifical and medical databases, geographic information systems, and multimedia databases. In this article, we discuss object-oriented databases, with a focus on data model and query language aspects