OODB

[Alex Rice]

On Dec 19, 2003, at 9:33 AM, Chuck Pelto wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Is anyone here familiar with Object-Oriented Data Base systems? And is 
> there anything like one that can be hooked to via Revolution as a 
> front-end?

Probably not. But that might not be a bad thing depending on what you 
really need.

OODBMS refers to programming systems where the database storage is kind 
of "persistent" objects. They only be accessed via the native 
programming language- e.g. Java, Smalltalk, etc. See 
<news:comp.databases.objects>. There is no standard for OODBMS and the 
vendors existing are fast changing and much hyped. Be careful!

SQL on the other hand is standardized and so most or all relational 
databases support SQL.

Object-relational (as opposed to OODBMS) refers to creating a 
connection between any old relational database tables via SQL and 
programming objects (Java, Smalltalk, C++, etc). This is 
"object-relational mapping". This is a much more conservative and 
common way to use "objects" with a database.

Something a bit different is, is PostgreSQL. It's object-relational, 
but the E-R part is supported on the server side, so it's more 
object-oriented I guess. So in additional to being a great SQL database 
it has type extensibility, language extensibility, and table 
inheritance features. <http://postgresql.com/>

In PostgreSQL you can define your own data types, and have tables 
inherit from other tables. For example the PostGIS project adds spatial 
and geometric types and functions to the the standard SQL features. One 
still uses SQL but adds in in the special data types and function 
names.

See also: Why Aren't You Using An Object Oriented Database Management 
System? 
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/03/1434242&mode=nested>

Hope this helps,


Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | 
<http://mindlube.com>

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco