Object-Relational Modeling

Abstract

Modeling techniques play an important role in the development of database applications. Well-known entity-relationship modeling and its extensions have become a widely-accepted approach for relational database conceptual design. An object-oriented approach has brought a new view of conceptual modeling. A class as a fundamental concept of the object-oriented approach encapsulates both data and behavior, whereas traditional relational databases are able to store only data. In the early 1990s, the difference between the relational and object-oriented (OO) technologies, which were, and are still used together to build complex software systems, was labeled the object-relational impedance mismatch (Ambler, 2003). The object-oriented approach and the need of new application areas to store complex data have greatly influenced database technology since that time. Besides appearance of object-oriented database systems, which fully implement objectoriented paradigm in a database environment (Catell et al., 2003), traditional relational database management systems become object-relational (Stonebraker & Brown, 1999). The most recent versions of the SQL standard, SQL: 1999 (Melton & Simon (2001) and SQL: 2003 (Eisenberg et al., 2004), introduced object-relational features to the standard and leading database producers have already released packages which incorporate them.