Introduction to RDBMS, OODBMS and

ORDBMS
(Page 1 of 4 )

Thanks to the Internet, the legal need to keep track of lots of business information, new
marketing methods, and the explosion of data-intensive scientific progress, databases are being
used more than ever before for storing and accessing information. There are currently three
different models in use for database management systems: relational, object-oriented, and
object-relational. This article introduces all three, and discusses their relative strengths and
weaknesses.

Relational Database Management System

Edgar F. Codd at IBM invented the relational database in 1970. Referred to as RDBMS, the
relational model extended two previous database systems, the hierarchical and the network
models. After Codd’s development, “prototype RDBMS were developed at IBM and UC-
Berkeley, and several vendors were offering relational database products shortly thereafter.”

The relational model is based on the structure of a database. A database is simply a collection of
one or more relations or tables with columns and rows. The use of set theory allows for data to
be structured in a series of tables that has both columns and rows. Each column corresponds to
an attribute of that relation, while each row corresponds to a record that contains data values for
an entity.

The main elements of RDBMS are based on Ted Codd’s 13 rules for a relational system, the
concept of relational integrity, and normalization. The three fundamentals of a relational
database are that all information must be held in the form of a table, where all data are described
using data values. The second fundamental is that each value found in the table columns does not
repeat. The final fundamental is the use of Standard Query Language (SQL ).

Benefits of RDBMS are that the system is simple, flexible, and productive. Because the tables
are simple, data is easier to understand and communicate with others. RDBMS are flexible
because users do not have to use predefined keys to input information. Also, RDBMS are more
productive because SQL is easier to learn. This allows users to spend more time inputting instead
of learning. More importantly, RDBMS’s biggest advantage is the ease with which users
can create and access data and extend it if needed. After the original database is created, new
data categories can be added without the existing application being changed.

There are limitations to the relational database management system. First, relational databases do
not have enough storage area to handle data such as images, digital and audio/video. The system
was originally created to handle the integration of media, traditional fielded data, and templates.
Another limitation of the relational database is its inadequacy to operate with languages outside
of SQL. After its original development, languages such as C++ and JavaScript were formed.
However, relational databases do not work efficiently with these languages. A third limitation is
the requirement that information must be in tables where relationships between entities are
defined by values.

Today, the relational model is the dominant data model as well as the foundation for the leading
DBMS products, which include IBM’s DB2 family, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft’s
Access and SQLServer, as well as FoxBase and Paradox. RDBMS represent close to a
multibillion-dollar industry alone.

To combat the limitations of RDBMS and meet the challenge of the increasing rise of the
Internet and the Web, programmers developed object-oriented databases in the 1980s. The main
objective of Object-Oriented Database Management Systems, commonly known as OODBMS,
is to provide consistent, data independent, secure, controlled and extensible data management
services to support the object-oriented model. They were created to handle big and complex data
that relational databases could not.

There are important characteristics involved with object-oriented databases. The most important
characteristic is the joining of object-oriented programming with database technology, which
provides an integrated application development system. Object-oriented programming results in
4 main characteristics: inheritances, data encapsulation, object identity, and polymorphism.
Inheritance allows one to develop solutions to complex problems incrementally by defining new
objects in terms of previously defined objects.

Data encapsulation or simply encapsulation allows the hiding of the internal state of the objects.
Encapsulated objects are those objects that can only be assessed by their methods instead of their
internal states. There are three types of encapsulated objects users and developers should
recognize. The first is full encapsulation, in which all the operations on objects are done through
message sending and method execution. The second is write encapsulation, which is where the
internal state of the object is visible only for reading operations. The third is partial
encapsulation, which involves allowing direct access for reading and writing for only a part of
the internal state.

Object identity allows objects of the database to be independent of each other. Polymorphism
and dynamic binding allow one to define operations for one object and then to share the
specification of the operation with other objects. This allows users and/or programmers to
compose objects to provide solutions without having to write code that is specific to each object.

The language important to OODBMS is data definition and manipulation language (DDML).
The use of this language allows persistent data to be created, updated, deleted, or retrieved. An
OODBMS needs a computational versus a relational language because it can be used to avoid
impedance mismatch. DDML allows users to define a database, including creating, altering, and
dropping tables and establishing constraints. DDMLs are used to maintain and query a database,
including updating, inserting, modifying, and querying data.
The OODBMS has many advantages and benefits. First, object-oriented is a more natural way of
thinking. Second, the defined operations of these types of systems are not dependent on the
particular database application running at a given moment. Third, the data types of object-
oriented databases can be extended to support complex data such as images, digital and
audio/video, along with other multi-media operations. Different benefits of OODBMS are its
reusability, stability, and reliability. Another benefit of OODBMS is that relationships are
represented explicitly, often supporting both navigational and associative access to information.
This translates to improvement in data access performance versus the relational model.

Another important benefit is that users are allowed to define their own methods of access to data
and how it will be represented or manipulated. The most significant benefit of the OODBMS is
that these databases have extended into areas not known by the RDBMS. Medicine, multimedia,
and high-energy physics are just a few of the new industries relying on object-oriented databases.

As with the relational database method, object-oriented databases also has disadvantages or
limitations. One disadvantage of OODBMS is that it lacks a common data model. There is also
no current standard, since it is still considered to be in the development stages.

Object-oriented database technology is a marriage of object-oriented programming and database

technologies. Figure 1 illustrates how these programming and database concepts have come
together to provide what we now call object-oriented databases.

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of object-oriented database technology is that it

combines object-oriented programming with database technology to provide an integrated
application development system. There are many advantages to including the definition of
operations with the definition of data. First, the defined operations apply ubiquitously and are not
dependent on the particular database application running at the moment. Second, the data types
can be extended to support complex data such as multi-media by defining new object classes that
have operations to support the new kinds of information.

Other strengths of object-oriented modeling are well known. For example, inheritance allows one
to develop solutions to complex problems incrementally by defining new objects in terms of
previously defined objects. Polymorphism and dynamic binding allow one to define operations
for one object and then to share the specification of the operation with other objects. These
objects can further extend this operation to provide behaviors that are unique to those objects.
Dynamic binding determines at runtime which of these operations is actually executed,
depending on the class of the object requested to perform the operation. Polymorphism and
dynamic binding are powerful object-oriented features that allow one to compose objects to
provide solutions without having to write code that is specific to each object. All of these
capabilities come together synergistically to provide significant productivity advantages to
database application developers .

A significant difference between object-oriented databases and relational databases is that object-
oriented databases represent relationships explicitly, supporting both navigational and associative
access to information. As the complexity of interrelationships between information within the
database increases, so do the advantages of representing relationships explicitly. Another benefit
of using explicit relationships is the improvement in data access performance over relational
value-based relationships.

A unique characteristic of objects is that they have an identity that is independent of the state of
the object. For example, if one has a car object and we remodel the car and change its
appearance, the engine, the transmission, and the tires so that it looks entirely different, it would
still be recognized as the same object we had originally. Within an object-oriented database, one
can always ask the question, “is this the same object I had previously?”, assuming one
remembers the object’s identity. Object-identity allows objects to be related as well as shared
within a distributed computing network.

All of these advantages point to the application of object-oriented databases to information

management problems that are characterized by the need to manage:

 a large number of different data types,

 a large number of relationships between the objects, and

 objects with complex behaviors.

Application areas where this kind of complexity exists includes engineering, manufacturing,
simulations, office automation and large information systems.
Object-Relational database (ORDBMS) is the third type of database common today. ORDBMS
are systems that “attempt to extend relational database systems with the functionality necessary
to support a broader class of applications and, in many ways, provide a bridge between the
relational and object-oriented paradigms.”

ORDBMS was created to handle new types of data such as audio, video, and image files that
relational databases were not equipped to handle. In addition, its development was the result of
increased usage of object-oriented programming languages, and a large mismatch between these
and the DBMS software.

One advantage of ORDBMS is that it allows organizations to continue using their existing
systems, without having to make major changes. A second advantage is that it allows users and
programmers to start using object-oriented systems in parallel.

There are challenges in implementing an ORDBMS. The first is storage and access methods. The
second is query processing, and the third is query optimization.

Since the development of RDBMS, OODBMS, and ORDBMS, many vendors have extended
their systems with the ability to store new data types such as images and texts, and with the
ability to ask more complex queries.

One rising technique is enterprise resource planning and management resource planning, which
add another layer of application-oriented features on top of a DBMS. Included applications come
from Baan, Oracle, SAP, and Siebel. These programs each identify a set of common tasks
encountered by a large number of organizations and provide a general application layer to carry
out these tasks.

More importantly, DBMS have advanced into the Internet and Web Age. Stored data is widely
being accessed through a Web browser. Today, queries are being generated through Web-
accessible forms and answers are being formatted using a mark-up language such as HTML . In
addition, many vendors and distributors are adding features to their DBMS aimed at making it
better equipped for Internet usage.

In summary, relational and object-oriented database systems each have certain strengths as well
as certain weaknesses. In general, the weakness of one type of system tends to be strength of the
other.