Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-08
2001-05-01
Von Buhr, Maria N. (Department: 2171)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
active
06226637
ABSTRACT:
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems, methods and programs in the field of integrating object technology with database technology in a client/server environment, and more specifically, building objects by a query engine in response to a query by retrieving results from a database or other data source, and returning handles to application objects as query results for further use as such by the application.
2. Description of the Related Art
Databases are computerized information storage and retrieval systems. A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) which uses relational techniques for storing and retrieving data. Relational databases are organized into tables which consist of rows and columns of data. The rows are formally called tuples. A database can have many tables and each table can have multiple tuples and multiple columns. The tables are typically stored on random access storage devices (DASD) such as magnetic or optical disk drives for semi-permanent storage.
A DBMS is structured to accept commands to store, retrieve, and delete data. One widely used and well known set of commands is called the Structured Query Language (SQL). The current SQL standard is known informally as SQL/92. The definitions for SQL provide that a DBMS should respond to a particular query with a particular set of data given a specified database content, but the method that the DBMS uses to actually find the required information in the tables on the disk drives is left up to the DBMS. There can be more than one method that can be used by the DBMS to access the required data. The DBMS will optimize the method used to find the data requested in a query in order to minimize the computer time used and, therefore, the cost of doing the query.
In object-oriented databases (OODB), the database is organized into objects having members that can be pointers to other objects. The objects contain references, and collections of references, to other objects in the database, thus leading to databases with complex nested structures.
A query can declaratively specify the contents of a view. For relational databases, a view is essentially a virtual table having virtual rows and virtual columns of data. Although views are not directly mapped to real data in storage, views can be used for retrieval as if the data they represent is actually stored. A view can be used to present to a user a single logical view of information that is actually spread across multiple. tables.
Object oriented (OO) views provide a similar service for object data as relational views do for relational data. An OO view is an alternative way of looking at data in objects contained in one or more queryable collections. An OO view is a named specification of a virtual result collection. Similarly to relational views, the bodies of some OO views in some OO systems can be queries that declaratively specify the contents of the view. In contrast with relational schemas, OO schemas are defined with a rich set of types that include multivalued attributes such as collections. These types directly model hierarchical and many-to-many relationships in the application's schema. For example, a department has a set of employees, an employee has a set of children, and so on.
Objects and Views are further discussed in the following:
“Updating Relational Databases through Object-Based Views”;
Thierry Barsalou, Arthur M. Keller, Niki Siambela, Gio Wiederhold;
Proc. ACM
-
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, Denver, June 1991.
“The MultiView OODB View System: Design and Implementation;” Harumi A. Kuno and Elke A. Rundensteiner; University of Michigan Technical Report CSE-TR-241-95.
“Object Views: Extending the Vision”; Sandra Heiler, Stanley Zdonik;
Proc. IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
90, April 1990.
“Objects and Views”; Serge Abiteboul, Anthony Bonner;
ACM
-
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, ACM 2/91.
“On View Support in Object-Oriented Database Systems”; Won Kim, William Kelley;
Modern Database Systems: The Object Model, Interoperability, and Beyond, Part
1
/Next
-
Generation Database Technology,
chapter 6, 1995.
“Towards Heterogeneous Multimedia Information Systems: The Garlic Approach”; M. J. Carey, L. M. Haas, P. M. Schwarz, M. Arya, W. F. Cody, R. Fagin, M. Flickner, A. W. Luniewski, W. Niblack, D. Petkovic, J. Thomas, J. H. Williams and E. L. Wimmers;
Proc.
1995,
IEEE Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering,
Taipei, Taiwan, March 1995.
“Queries and Views in an Object-Oriented Data Model;” U. Dayal;
Proc.
2
nd International Workshop on Database Programming Languages
; editors, Richard Hull, Ron Morrison, and David Stemple, Gleneden Beach, June 1989.
The integration of object technology and database systems has been an active area of research for the past decade. One important aspect of the integration of these two technologies is the provision of efficient, declarative query interfaces for accessing and manipulating object data. Compared to other aspects of object-oriented database (OODB) technology, such as integrating persistence into object-oriented languages like C++ and Smalltalk, queries were given relatively little attention in the early days of OODB research. See “Third Generation Data Base System Manifesto, Mike Stonebraker et al,
Computer Standards & Interfaces,
Dec. 12, 1991. In “Object-Oriented Database Systems: Promise, Reality, and Future,” Won Kim,
Proc.
19
th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases
, Dublin, August 1993, it is pointed out that most commercial OODB systems are quite weak in this regard. As the OODB field has developed, however, a number of proposals for OODB query languages have appeared in the database literature including the following:
“A Data Model and Query Language for EXODUS,”
Proc. ACM
-
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, Carey, Michael; DeWitt, David; Vandenberg, Scott; Chicago, June 1988.
“A Model of Queries for Object-Oriented Databases,” Kim, Won;
Proc.
15
th International Conference on Very Large Data Basses
, Amsterdam, August 1989.
“A Query Language for the O
2
Object-Oriented Database System,” Bancilhon, Francois; Cluet, S.; Delobel, C.;
Proc.
2
nd International Workshop on Database Programming Languages
, Hull, Richard; Morrison, Ron; Stemple, David, editors; Gleneden Beach, June 1989, Morgan-Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
“Query Processing in the ObjectStore Database System,” Orenstein, Jack; Haradhvala, Sam; Margulies, Benson; Sakahara, Don;
Proc. ACM
-
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, San Diego, June 1992.
“CQL++: A SQL for a C++ Based Object-Oriented DBMS,” Dar, S.; Gehani, N.; Jagadish, H.;
Proc International Conference on Extending Data Base Technology
, Advances in Database Technology-EDBT '92. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vienna, 1992. Springer-Verlag.
“Querying Object-Oriented Databases,” Kifer, Michael; Kim, Won; Sagiv, Yehoshua;
Proc. ACM
-
SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, San Diego, June 1992.
“Object Query Language,” Atwood, Tom; Duhl, Joshua; Ferran, Guy; Loomis, Mary; Wade, Drew;
Object Database Standards: ODMG
-93
Release
1.1, R. G. G. Cattell, editor, Morgan-Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1993.
“Experiences building the open oodb query optimizer,” Blakeley, José; McKenna, William J.; Graefe, Goetz,
Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data
, Washington, D.C., May 1993.
For example, O2 and ObjectStore (ObjectStore is a trademark of Object Design, Inc.) each provide their own flavor of an object query l
Carey Michael J.
Kiernan Gerald G.
Foerster Ingrid
International Business Machines Corp.
Pretty, Schroeder & Poplawski
Von Buhr Maria N.
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