Modeling and querying multimedia data

Abstract

Amidst the dramatic developments of computer technology in the last decades, we have seen a growing interest in supporting multimedia data. Compared with traditional data, the most noticeable features of multimedia data are their spatiality (the spatial layout of objects and their relationships), temporality (time-dependence in media such as video and audio), and presentation requirements (imposed in response to user queries, such as synchronization of different media). Developing database management support for multimedia data poses interesting challenges. Many multimedia database management systems have been developed to deal with these multimedia features. However, they suffer some common problems: lack of generality in media modeling, lack of precise knowledge of spatial information, limited spatio-temporal functionality, ineffective query languages, and inefficient query processing. The main purpose of this work is to investigate these problems and provide solutions. The first step of the research is to design a multimedia data model which is built upon and extends existing models. The proposed model is based on a temporal interval algebra. The establishment of a multimedia data model provides a theoretical foundation that is used to investigate multimedia query languages. The result is a general-purpose, object-oriented multimedia query language which supports content-based information retrieval. A prototype has been built to validate the proposed concepts.