"This volume contains 14 survey articles by reputed database researchers. They give an account of the state of the art, present research highlights and offer an outlook into the '90s regarding the most likely evolution of database technology-research, ad-tech, products and applications. The volume is structured into the following parts: - The evolution of database technology and its impact on enterprise information systems (keynote paper); - Demands on database systems in the '90s (office, engineering, science, multimedia, standardization); - User aspects (application programmers, ad hoc query users); - Database system and architecture concepts for novel applications (data models, object orientation, deductive DBMS, extensibility, data replication); - System and implementation aspects (performance and reliability, distributed and cooperative DBMS, hardware impact). The volume may serve as an orientation for all those who are interested in database systems and their impact on computer applications."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

Multimedia Database Systems: Design and Implementation Strategies is a compendium of the state-of-the-art research and development work pertaining to the problems and issues in the design and development of multimedia database systems. The chapters in the book are developed from presentations given at previous meetings of the International Workshop on Multi-Media Data Base Management Systems (IW-MMDBMS), and address the following issues: development of adequate multimedia database models, design of multimedia database query and retrieval languages, design of indexing and organization techniques, development of efficient and reliable storage models, development of efficient and dependable retrieval and delivery strategies, and development of flexible, adaptive, and reliable presentation techniques.

This volume presents the proceedings of a workshop on parallel database systems organized by the PRISMA (Parallel Inference and Storage Machine) project. The invited contributions by internationally recognized experts give a thorough survey of several aspects of parallel database systems. The second part of the volume gives an in-depth overview of the PRISMA system. This system is based on a parallel machine, where the individual processors each have their own local memory and communicate with each other over a packet-switched network. On this machine a parallel object-oriented programming language, POOL-X, has been implemented, which provides dedicated support for database systems as well as general facilities for parallel programming. The POOL-X system then serves as a platform for a complete relational main-memory database management system, which uses the parallelism of the machine to speed up significantly the execution of database queries. The presentation of the PRISMA system, together with the invited papers, gives a broad overview of the state of the art in parallel database systems.

Advanced information technology is pervasive in any kind of human activity - science, business, finance, management and others - and this is particularly true for database systems. Both database theory and database applications constitute a very important part of the state of the art of computer science. Meanwhile there is some discrepancy between different aspects of database activity. Theoreticians are sometimes not much aware of the real needs of business and industry; software specialists not always have the time or the apportunity to get acquainted with the most recent theoretical ideas and trends, as well as with advanced prototypes arising from these ideas; potential users often do not have the possibility of evaluating the theoretical foundations and the potential practical impact of different commercial products. So the main goal of the course was to put together people involved in different aspects of database activity and to promote active exchange of ideas among them.

This well-received book, now in its third edition, is a comprehensive presentation of the fundamentals of object-oriented database systems (OODBMS). It provides extensive coverage of the different approaches to object data management, including the three major approaches--semantic database systems approach, object-oriented programming language extension approach, and the relational extension approach--as well as the various types of architectures of object-oriented database systems. The book discusses all recent developments in this field, such as the emergence of Java as the dominant object-oriented programming language--resulting in upcoming OODBMS products such as Ozone--and the provision of object-oriented database features in object-relational database systems (ORDBMS) products such as Oracle 9i and DB2. The new edition provides an extensive discussion of PostgreSQL, a popular open source object-oriented database system which has emerged as a viable alternative to expensive commercial database systems such as Oracle. The book is extensively illustrated, which enables students to develop a firm grasp of the underlying concepts. The chapter-end exercises help in testing the students' comprehension of the fundamental principles. The book is primarily meant for students of IT-related programmes having courses in database systems. Computer professionals will also find the book immensely useful.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Rules in Database Systems, RIDS '97, held in Skövde, June 1997. The 13 revised papers presented in the book were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The book documents the state-of-the art in the area. The papers are devoted to deductive databases, active database systems architectures, events in workflow management, rule modelling and simulation, rule confluence, rule termination analysis, rule testing and validation, active database systems design.

The second edition of this bestselling title is a perfect blend of theoretical knowledge and practical application. It progresses gradually from basic to advance concepts in database management systems, with numerous solved exercises to make learning easier and interesting. New to this edition are discussions on more commercial database management systems.