A Data Structure for Interactive Multimedia Database Systems

Abstract

A data structure for an Interactive Multimedia database system has been developed in Visual Basic (Ver. 6.0). Here, the item retrieval method is both hierarchic and relational through the use of object oriented approach. The searching and sorting of data, joining of two or more files and database query generation are adopted through the text annotated primary key to save the overall execution time. In query generation, the system enables indirect querying to retrieve the contents of heterogeneous types of data by adopting the domain knowledge. The condition of queries is represented in a single media such as text for ease of specifying queries. In indirect querying, the type of specified condition differs from that of target data. Such facilities provide more freedom in specifying a query for retrieval in a multimedia database. The domain knowledge describes how the system views the target multimedia data for the retrieval of data by using MSQL (Multimedia SQL). MSQL supports the spatial predicates for image and graphic data retrieval. The arguments of the predicates can be semantics, image/graphics or dual entities. Since the present system is object oriented in nature it doesn't require any separate control for each media type and thus saves both time and resource. The system has been tested with 500 text and 500 image/graphics data for file creation, retrieval and query generation with 20 users in 30 minutes for nearly 99% accuracy.