Talk:Object database

Merge

Following all the indecisive debate about merging, I took the plunge and wrote a pretty-well new article on object databases, changing the OODBMS article to redirect to it. (Although the two terms have different meanings, this wasn't reflected in the articles, which were both writing about the same thing). Neither article was very good, both were rather opinionated, and I hope the overhaul is a better basis for moving forward. It's not anywhere near perfect yet and I hope others will improve it, but I felt something had to be done!

Mhkay 20:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Well done! Ejrrjs | What? 22:09, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, well done. Here is the old talk page:

2005 talk page

For merge

I just read them both and I'd say go for it. – 24.193.221.118

JG: They are either synonymous, or at least most people understand them as synonyms. I agree with merging. – 62.168.3.222

I'm saying go for the merge. I was thinking about what I would write in the object database article but it seems that most of the content would just be repeated from the OODBMS article. They're not synonymous, I realise that, but they are inextricably linked — they're not two separate ideas, and that's why it's so hard to write one article on object databases and another on object-oriented database management systems without having extensive repetition between them. --BSTRhino 00:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

They should be merged. Although there is a valid distinction between a database and a DBMS, the current articles do not make that distinction. They overlap greatly (and they are both rather weak, to be honest). Also, it's in the nature of objects that there is less distinction between state and behavior than there is in the relational world. Mhkay 20:13, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree that the articles need a lot of work, but merging two poor articles isn't going to solve that problem, and (as outlined in the No merge section below) it would only create more problems. Also, let's think about the long-term consequences here: What happens when the articles improve and the concepts are properly distinguished in the text? Do we separate the articles again?

I should also point out that both of the first two (unsigned) pro-merge comments were from anonymous users, and both comments were submitted before there was any discussion about the pros and cons of merging. I attached the submitters' IP addresses to differentiate them from BSTRhino's comments. – Ringbang 15:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

No merge

No merge. Not only are the two terms not synonymous, merging these articles would create an organizational inconsistency. Currently, relational database management system and relational database have separate articles; similarly, database management system and database are separate articles; federated database system and federated database are also separate articles. Meanwhile, for some reason, object-relational database is a discrete article, while ORDBMS and object-relational database management system both redirect to OODBMS.

OODBMS is not a very good article as it stands, and some of the redirects to it are inappropriate since object-oriented databases and object-relational databases are not the same thing.

By the same token, treating data models and database management systems as the same thing is like saying that automobiles are synonymous with internal combustion engines. In the case at hand, it creates a wrong impression of how we regard these entities in database theory. I say undo the merge-in-progress and concentrate on improving the individual articles. Ringbang 00:45, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

What about merging relational database management system and OODBMS with database management system instead of with object database? --R.Koot 00:51, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think that would be a good idea. For one thing, the resulting organization would still be inconsistent. Also, database management system is a long article, and most of its size is attributable to the subsection on RDBMS's. A distinct RDBMS article already exists; dedicated articles for the other system-specific subsections also exist. The system-specific subsections of the RDBMS article are lengthy and potentially content-rich enough to have their own articles.

As it stands, no doubt there is a considerable amount of repeated information between the database management system and the wikis dedicated to each respective DBMS model (RDBMS, ORDBMS, etc.). If anything, I think the bulk of the text in the system-specific subsections of database management system should be respectively offloaded and merged into the dedicated articles. A monolithic merge into the DBMS article would make it enormous, unwieldy, and more difficult to maintain. Ringbang 14:26, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I very much agree with you. Pavel Vozenilek 00:53, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

• No merge. Different topics, big articles . Rather, a common cleanup is required, to avoid duplicaiton. mikka (t) 00:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

SQL isn't relational

I am editing relational references which are actually SQL references.

Not sure what that comment is doing on this page, but it's a bad idea. Objecting to "relational database" for systems that are a practical engineering approximation to the mathematics of the relational model is like objecting to people describing wheels as circular or roads as straight.

Mhkay 20:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

--R.Koot 00:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

OMG

Should correct the page regarding OMG -- they were granted the right to develop new specifications based on ODMG 3.0; they did not "acquire" it.

charwing 15:03, 3 May 2006 (PST)

Made the mods discussed belowabove and added some text to explain better what the Object DB Technology WG is intending to do (am a member of it). Thought about adding a link to the Request for Info that was the basis of the 'announcement' cited in the article but decided not to. However, let me use this as a forum to encourage response from those who are interested in this technology area. Responses are due 1 June 2006. Here's the link: http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?mars/2006-2-18.

charwing 15:52, 3 May 2006 (PST)

Doug

Thanks for your updates, Doug: nice to have solid information from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I would criticize your contribution as being just a little bit lacking in dispassionate analysis, but that's the price you pay for getting a contribution from someone who was intimately involved!

Mhkay 21:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Links

Cleaned up the links -- removed three, one of which was dead, left the one to the open source benchmarking site and to the ODBMS.ORG site, which is sponsored by OMG through their European agent, Prof Robert Zicari but is hosted (physically) by an open source ODBMS vendor, db4o. "Unspammed" the two remaining. My WikiEditing may stink so hope others can clean it up (if need be) and make it right.

--Charwing 17:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

For History

The list of the notable object-oriented management systems is a little excessive right at the top of the article like that. The reader starts to lose interest before he or she gets into the meat of the article. I'd recommend striking most of that and then including a list of the notable systems in an infobox to the side, linked from the history section.--Bmccaff 15:20, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The first two entries (MUMPS and Intersystems) were not (and seemingly are not, unless something changed in the last 24 months) object databases. They are both hierarchical databases, but can both be thought of as document databases (or blob stores). While an object can be converted to a hierarchical structure, document, or a blob, that does not make MUMPS or Intersystems databases into OODBMSs -- any more than hanging a tire swing turns a tree into a car. Cameron Purdy (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

For Technical Features

In Technical Features, it's written that joins aren't necessary because objects can be located directly by pointers. Are these pointers indexed? How are the pointers referenced by a query? --Bmccaff 15:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Claims re: relational database versus object database

"a relational database becomes cumbersome to use with complex data." -- This sentence does not seem to meet NPOV criteria at all. "It is sometimes claimed that..." would be a good way to start this proposition, and it should be accompanied by some sources or quotations.Ryandaum 03:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

Further to my above comment, I think this whole article has serious NPOV issues! It reads more like an advocacy article ... for example : "Although some commentators have written off object database technology as a failure, the essential arguments in its favour remain valid" -- this is opinion unless someone can provide references, or at least say "some consider that ...". Ryandaum 01:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I am marking this with an NPOV tag, for the above reason. The article reads like an advertisement. More examples: "thereby making OODBMS ideal for OO programmers"; "companies have a vested interest in OODBMS to display their complex data"; "Using a DBMS that has been specifically designed to store data as objects gives an advantage to those companies that are geared towards"; "Access to data can be faster because joins are often not needed"; "The efficiency of such a database is also greatly improved in areas which demand massive amounts of data about one item. For example, a banking institution could get the user's account information and provide them efficiently with extensive information such as transactions, account information entries etc. The Big O Notation for such a database paradigm drops from O(n) to O(1), greatly increasing efficiency in these specific cases.". -- DBooth (talk) 19:49, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the uncited paragraphs. I am doubtful about the remaining paragraph as well - the prose seems to attempt to compare relational datbases with object databases, but the wording is such that it just mentions benefits of using an object database - and it might be that the cited references (which are unfortunately all offline) don't actually compare to RDBMs. If the paragraph compares object databases with e.g. coding your own data structures, or storing things in flat files, it makes little sense to have it there. Perhaps someone with access to the references will clear up the wording. W (talk) 22:03, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed the claim of high performance after checking the cited article, and replaced it with a soundbite of the article's actual claims. Concur that the remainder of the paragraph still has issues. --Ott2 (talk) 17:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Smalltalk

Is a Smalltalk programming language image (such as in VisualWorks) an Object Database? Wouter Lievens 10:54, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about VisualWorks but I'll answer the general question. No, a Smalltalk environment or image is not an OODB. The Smalltalk objects only persist while the image is live. For an OODB you need to have real persistence, not just when the program is running but stored to a persistent storage mechanism that persists past the life of any one program and can be accessed simultaneously by multiple systems. It's possible that some Smalltalk products (e.g. Visualworks) may provide additional DB capabilities but just a vanilla Smalltalk environment is not a DB. MadScientistX11 (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

In a sense, the Smalltalk programming language "image" is an object database, but not in the sense of a database management system. It is far simpler to think of it as a recoverable core dump. Gemstone/S, on the other hand, is an OODBMS built on top of Smalltalk, and it seems to meet all of the requirements of being an OODBMS. Cameron Purdy (talk) 14:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps a minor issue

I come from an undergraduate computer science background and have some experience with object-oriented programming languages like C++ and Java as well as exposure to the object-oriented design model of software engineering and knowledge of the theories behind relational databases, but after reading this article, I still don't have a clue what an object-oriented database is.

The way the article currently describes it, an object database seems no different from any object-oriented framework like the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). It mentioned traversing objects using pointers. Does this mean it's another name for a binary search tree and similar abstract data types?

I just did a Google search and found The Object-Oriented Database System Manifesto. Maybe citing information from this will clarify the subject for people who are trying to learn about something they don't know.--NeantHumain 02:28, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the difference is that an Object Database offers persistance and query, while a class models offers functionality. An instantiated MFC application when running is an instance of an object database, but a very small one. and it's query is limited to very specific things (query by windows handle). - Drdamour (talk) 20:43, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

OODBMS features in mainstream databases

It would be good to have a summary of OODBMS features in Oracle, MySQL, DB2 etc.

I think what you're referring to is object-relational, not object-oriented. — ^FatalError 00:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

wht — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.28.246.11 (talk) 15:16, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Objective-C

I've added Objective-C to the list of OO languages since there is an object database for this programming languages (EntropyDB). However, there is no entry for the database so far. --217.77.165.35 (talk) 11:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

If the OODB is intended for serious professional software development, it will not be tied to one specific OO language. That is one of the points of using an OODB so that you can get persistence that isn't tied to one implementation. MadScientistX11 (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Perl

I added Perl to the list; see for instance OOPS on CPAN 75.87.132.168 (talk) 06:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Rewriting of Characteristics section

I re-wrote the Characteristics section to use better English, provide more clarity in explanations, have a more logical ordering, and be more respectful of dynamic and diverse systems. If there are any technical flaws, please feel free to correct me (I figured any change would be a step up). --RProgrammer (talk) 05:17, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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High performance

"Object databases are generally recommended when there is a business need for high performance processing on complex data."

I can't let that one pass - whatever the advantages of object orientation, "high performance" isn't one of them. Flexible, probably. It may help with the design process. But the corollary of this is the performance hit you have to take.

--Fjleonhardt (talk) 13:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Fjleonhardt: That's misleading: "high performance for complex data" is not the same as 'high performance". And object orientation is here compared with a relational database model, not with structured programming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.101.206.228 (talk) 09:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

While as mentioned below "high performance" is not an advantage of object orientation, I think performance should still be discussed in the article. Whoever is implementing an object oriented database (for all its benefits), still desires as high a performance as possible. I recommend bringing in the OO7 project into the article. OO7 is the seminal work in OODBMS performance. This is the link I found for the paper I read a while ago. (not sure how permanent it is): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.45.4912&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Tan-amy2 (talk) 20:45, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

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Diagram in lede is misleading (relational)

The diagram in the lede shows two tables connected by a foreign key (activity code) with another table representing one instance. This is if anything an example of a relational schema and instance, nothing to do with an object database". 84.3.187.196 (talk) 05:43, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

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