Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Object Oriented Databases


There are varies types of databases that store information. Object oriented database (OODB) is "a database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects.". The difference between OODB’s than the rest of the databases, is that it stores objects rather than data. This allows OODB’s to handle more complex data than other databases like Relational database. Relational databases are "a collection of data items organized as a set of formally described tables from which data can be accessed easily". For example a Relational databases stores information by breaking the data into many different pieces, then categorize them into various tables for storage. When you need that information again it will gather all the different pieces and try to reassemble them back together, by using a program that speaks the same language as the data. This process takes a long time to retrieve the data. OODB’s on the other hand can simply just store the whole object into the database, no need to reconfigure the data. It can store graphics, videos, CAD models, and much more. While Relational databases can hold simply information like an employee’s name, DOB, hire date, exp. The OODB has been around for a long time, started in the late 1980’s and was supposed to replace the relational database which started in the 1970’s. Flash forward today and relational databases are still the most widely used database. But OODB’s are on the rise since the 2003 the sales for it have been steadily increasing by 12.5% annually. This is because there is a niche market, OODB’s are becoming more popular for uses with artificial intelligence and CAD/CAM applications. Companies like J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Citibank are using OODB technologies in modeling financial instruments. In the coming years I believe that more and more companies will adopt the use of OODB’s for its complex data storage, but it won’t replace the relational databases because of its simplicity. Like in Jeanine Lancellotti's post she says that “Object-orientation is yet another step in the quest for expressing solutions to problems in a more natural, easier to understand way.” Probably in the near future, with the advance in software, will might even see another form of a database and would trump both the relational and object-orientation databases.     





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