METIS: a flexible database foundation for unified media management

Current multimedia database systems largely focus on specific media types and/or application domains. This paper gives a sketch of METIS, a database solution for the unified management of any kind of digital media, characterized by profound customizability for domain or application needs. The system core is based on an expressive data model that can be adapted to any scheme for media management, description, and classification desired, and can accommodate arbitrary query operators, similarity measures, and/or feature extraction algorithms. METIS is based on a persistence abstraction layer allowing the exchange of storage back-ends and includes a customizable web front-end for media management. Thereby, METIS establishes a common database foundation for a wide spectrum of multimedia applications.