The Development of Object- oriented Databases - their Strengths and Weaknesses.

This paper considers the emergence of Object Oriented database (OODB) systems over the last 10 years, together with their strengths and weaknesses. Modern business and scientific computing requires sophisticated data and media storage to handle complex real-world problems. Data “objects”, in an objectoriented approach, are considered an ideal technology to handle multimedia data. OODBs can provide dramatic performance benefits, over relational systems, when managing rich data types. However, they require a more complex syntax (compared to Relational DB query languages) to manage an OO data model’s complexity of methods, class and aggregate hierarchy; this has created a significant cognitive issue for users to grasp. Whilst Object-oriented databases have superior capabilities in more effectively modelling the real world, they are regarded as immature; hence the emergence of hybrid Object-Relational (O/R) systems. Yet, OODBs are likely to occupy a niche in the market and be a logical choice for specialised multimedia, CAD/CAM, medical applications and mapping applications, it is likely that the more “conventional” O/RDBMS are likely to predominate.