The Teradata SQL3 Multimedia Database Server

Multimedia applications??-??such as fingerprint matching, signature verification, face recognition, and speech recognition or translation??-??require complex abstract data-type support within database management systems. However, conventional databases are not designed to support multimedia. In this chapter, we describe several multimedia database challenges and explain how Teradata solves these problems with its SQL3 Multimedia Database system. A key component of this system is the Multimedia Object Manager, a general-purpose content-based multimedia server designed for the symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) and massively parallel processor (MPP) environments. The Teradata SQL3 Multimedia Database system allows users to define and manipulate user-defined functions (UDFs), which are invoked in parallel in the Multimedia Object Manager to analyze/manipulate the contents of multimedia objects. The two key characteristics of this subsystem are its support for content-based retrieval and multimodal integration. We provide an in-depth analysis of retrieval techniques using feature extraction and spatial indices. We also illustrate the power of multimodal integration by walking through the development of a complex application involving the generation of a ?>talking agent, ?> which uses speech, image, and video data types within the database system.