The Object-Relational Data Model

This chapter presents the concepts of object-oriented paradigm. To understand the role of objects in relational databases, one must first understand the object-oriented paradigm as it is used in object-oriented programming and pure object-oriented databases. The easiest way to do so is to begin with an example that has absolutely nothing to do with programming at all. If someone were writing an object-oriented computer program to manage the instructions for playing solitaire, each game would be known as an object. It is a self-contained element used by the program. It has things that it knows about itself: its name, an illustration of the layout, the number of decks needed to play, how to deal, how to play, and how to determine when the game is won. In object-oriented terms, the values that an object stores about itself are known as attributes or variables or, occasionally, properties.