A major revision of the standard for object database management systems (ODBMSs), this book represents an important industry consensus on component technology for database products and languages, enabling wide acceptance and adoption of object database technology. This revision adds coverage of Java bindings to the updated material on C++ and SmallTalk.

ODMG is a widely accepted standard for object database modelling; every year more companies implement it. ODMG 3.0 integrates programming languages with databases and ensures the portability of applications across platforms and DBMS products.

Written by ODGM's C++ representative, this pragmatic guidebook is the first comprehensive introduction to programming object-oriented databases with OQL. It offers comparisons with SQL, with which readers are already familiar, as a bridge to understanding OQL and as a means of contrasting object-oriented versus relational database development.

This book is the first of its kind and is produced as a result of the efforts by a consortium of database companies called the Object Database Management Group (ODMG). With this book, standards are defined for object management systems and this will be the foundational book for object-oriented database product.

This book will help you make sense of the conflicting theories and vendor claims about object-oriented database systems."--BOOK JACKET.

Object-oriented databases were originally developed as an alternative to relational database technology for the representation, storage, and access of non-traditional data forms that were increasingly found in advanced applications of database technology. After much debate regarding object-oriented versus relational database technology, object-oriented extensions were eventually incorporated into relational technology to create object-relational databases. Both object-oriented databases and object-relational databases, collectively known as object databases, provide inherent support for object features, such as object identity, classes, inheritance hierarchies, and associations between classes using object references. This monograph presents the fundamentals of object databases, with a specific focus on conceptual modeling of object database designs. After an introduction to the fundamental concepts of object-oriented data, the monograph provides a review of object-oriented conceptual modeling techniques using side-by-side Enhanced Entity Relationship diagrams and Unified Modeling Language conceptual class diagrams that feature class hierarchies with specialization constraints and object associations. These object-oriented conceptual models provide the basis for introducing case studies that illustrate the use of object features within the design of object-oriented and object-relational databases. For the object-oriented database perspective, the Object Data Management Group data definition language provides a portable, language-independent specification of an object schema, together with an SQL-like object query language. LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) is presented as a case study of an object query language together with its use in the db4o open-source object-oriented database. For the object-relational perspective, the object-relational features of the SQL standard are presented together with an accompanying case study of the object-relational features of Oracle. For completeness of coverage, an appendix provides a mapping of object-oriented conceptual designs to the relational model and its associated constraints. Table of Contents: List of Figures / List of Tables / Introduction to Object Databases / Object-Oriented Databases / Object-Relational Databases

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.