Previous to this assignment, my general understanding and use of databases related to my experience with BIM. The larger manufacturers of MEP equipment (TRANE, Price, etc) have "libraries" or databases of families that they provide on their websites. These databases have three primary advantages: they lessen the amount of time that the engineer will spend creating families specific to their projects, they make the engineer more likely to utilize projects created by the manufacturer of the family, and finally they add the specific parameters for the manufacturer's product to your project therefore giving a more accurate depiction in plan. Maria did a great job of explaining the general aspect of this process in her blog post, relating uses for both engineers and architects. Little did I know, that this type of database is an object oriented database, and I had been using this type of database daily for the past few years.
When I began searching for specific definitions of object oriented databases, I found that the basic definition was that they store objects rather than data. Object databases are typically utilized for CAD projects, commerce, and multimedia applications. The primary advantage of object oriented databases that stood out to me is the fact that they tend to be realistic models rather than relational databases which merely store data.
It is my belief that this topic is relevant not only in this course, but through our use of CAD technologies throughout our careers. At one point or another, we will have to utilize object oriented databases for design and planning, or relational databases for our calculations.
Sources:
http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/database/basicdb/dataobject.html
ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/courses/F04/215/215-OODB.ppt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_database
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