Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B.

Navathe

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Chapter 22
Object-Relational and Extended-Relational Systems

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Chapter Outline

22.1 Overview of Object-Relational Features of SQL 22.2 Evolution and Current Trends 22.3 The Informix Server 22.4 Object-Relational Features of Oracle 22.5 Implementation and Related Issues for Extended Type Systems 22.6 The Nested Relational Model 22.7 Summary
Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Chapter Objectives

To address the following questions:

What are the shortcoming of the current DBMSs? What has led to these shortcomings? How Informix Universal Server and Oracle have addressed some of the challenges

Identify new challenges

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.1 SQLs Object-Relational Features

SQL was specified in 1970s SQL was enhanced substantially in 1989 and 1992 A new standard called SQL3 added objectoriented features A subset of SQL3 standard, now known as SQL99 has been approved

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Component of the SQL Standard

SQL/Framework, SQL/Foundation, SQL/Bindings, SQL/Object New parts addressing temporal, transaction aspects of SQL SQL/CLI (Call Level Interface) SQL/PSM (Persistent Stored Modules)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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SQL/Foundation

New types New predicates Relational operators Rules and triggers User defined types Transaction capabilities Stored routines

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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SQL/CLI

SQL/CLI stands for SQL Call Level Interface SQL/CLI provides rules that allow execution of application code without providing source code

Avoids the need for preprocessing Contains about 50 routines for tasks such as connection to the SQL server

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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SQL/PSM

PSM = Persistent Stored Modules

Specifies facilities for partitioning an application between a client and a server Enhances performance by minimizing network traffic SQL Bindings included Embedded SQL SQL/Temporal deals with historical data

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Object-Relational Support in SQL-99

Type constructors to specify complex objects Mechanism to specify object-identity Mechanism for encapsulation of operations Mechanism to support inheritance

I.e., specify specialization and generalization

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Type Constructors (1)

Two types: row and array Known as user-defined types (UDTs) Syntax for a row type

CREATE TYPE row_type_name AS [ROW] (<component decln>)

An example:
CREATE TYPE Addr_type AS ( street VARCHAR (45), city VARCHAR (25), zip CHAR (5));
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Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Type Constructors (2)

An array type is specified for an attribute whose value will be a collection Example:
CREATE TYPE Comp_type AS ( comp_name VARCHAR (2). location VARCHAR (20) ARRAY [10] );

Dot notation is used to refer to components

E.g., comp1.comp_name is the comp_name part of comp1 (of type Comp_type)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Object-Identifiers Using References

A user-defined type can also be used to specify the row types of a table:
CREATE TABLE Company OF Comp_type (REF IS comp_id SYSTEM GENERATED, PRIMARY KEY (comp_name));

Syntax to specify object identifiers:

REF IS <oid_attribute> <value_generation_method>

Options:

SYSTEM GENERATED or DERIVED

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Attributes as References

A component attribute of one tuple may be a reference:

CREATE TYPE Employment_type AS ( employee REF (Emp_type) SCOPE (Employee), company REF (Comp_type) SCOPE (Company));

Keyword SCOPE specifies the table whose tuples can be referenced by a reference attribute via the dereferencing notation ->

E.g., e.company->comp_name

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Encapsulation of Operations

A construct similar to the class definition Users can create a named user-defined type with its own methods in addition to attributes:
CREATE TYPE <type-name> ( list of attributes declaration of EQUAL and LESS THAN methods declaration of other methods );

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Method Syntax

Syntax:
METHOD <name> (<arg-list>) RETURNS <type>;

An example
CREATE TYPE Addr_type AS ( street VARCHAR (45), city VARCHAR (25), zip CHAR (5) ) METHOD apt_no ( ) RETURNS CHAR(8);

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Inheritance in SQL

Inheritance is specified via the UNDER keyword Example

CREATE TYPE Manager_type UNDER Emp_type AS (dept_managed CHAR (20));

Manager_type inherits all features of Emp_type

and it has an additional attribute called dept_managed

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Other Operations and New Features

WITH RECURSIVE is used to specify recursive queries User accounts may have a role that specifies the level of authorization and privileges;

Roles can change

Trigger granularity allows row-level and statement-level triggers SQL3 also supports programming languages facilities

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.2 Evolution of Database Technology

Several families of DBMS products Two important ones:

RDBMS ODBMS Network Hierarchical While legacy systems are replaced by new offerings, we may encounter various issues
Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Two major legacy DBMSs:

Interoperability concerns:

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Current Trends

Main force behind development of ORDBMSs: meet the challenges of new applications:

Text Images Audio Streamed data BLOBs (binary large objects)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.3 The Informix Universal Server

Combines relational and object database technologies Consider two dimensions of DBMS applications:

Complexity of data (x) Complexity of queries (y)

Observe the possible quadrants

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Four Quadrants of DBMS Applications

Observe the possible quadrants Quadrant 1 (x=0, y=0): simple data, simple query Quadrant 2 (x=0, y=1): simple data, complex query Quadrant 3 (x=1, y=0): complex data, simple query Quadrant 4 (x=1, y=1): complex data, complex query Traditional RDBMSs belong to Quadrant 2 Many object DBMSs belong to Quadrant 3 Informix Universal belongs to Quadrant 4 It extends the basic relational model by incorporating a variety of features that make it object-relational

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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How Informix Universal Server Extends the Relational Data Model

Support for extensible data types Support for user-defined routines Implicit notion of inheritance Support for indexing extensions Database Blade API

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Extensible Data Types

DBMS is treated as razor into which data blade modules can be inserted A number of new data types are provided

Two-dimensional geometric objects Images Time series Text Web pages

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Constructs to Declare Additional Types

Opaque type:

Encapsulates a type (hidden representation)

Extends an existing type thru inheritance Represents a composite type (like Cs struct)

Distinct type:

Row type:

Collection type:

Lists, sets, multi-sets (bags)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Support for User-Defined Routines

Informix supports user-defined functions and routines to manipulate user-defined types Functions are implemented

Either in Stored Procedure (SPL) Or in a high-level programming language (such as C or Java)

Functions can define operations like

plus, times, divide, sum, avg, negate

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Support for Inheritance

Informix supports inheritance at two levels:

Data Operation

Data inheritance is used to create sub-types (thru the RETURN keyword):

CREATE ROW TYPE employee_type (); CREATE ROW TYPE engineer_type ( ) UNDER employee_type; CREATE ROW TYPE engineer_mgr_type ( ) UNDER engineer_type;
Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Support for Indexing

Informix supports indexing on user-defined routines in a single table or a table hierarchy:

CREATE INDEX empl_city ON employee (city (address));

The above line creates an index on the table employee using the value of the city function

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Universal Servers Support for External Data Source

Informix supports external data sources

E.g., data stored in a file system

External data are mapped to a table in the database called virtual table interface The interface enables the user to defined operations that can be used as proxies

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Informix Support for Data Blade Application Programming Interface

Two dimensional (spatial) data types

E.g., a point, line, polygon, etc.

tiff, gif, jpeg, FAX

Image data types:

Time series data type Text data type:

a single data type called doc whose instances are large objects

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.4
Object-Relational Features of Oracle

VARRAY for representing multi-valued attributes

CREATE TYPE phone_type AS OBJECT (phone_number CHAR (10)); CREATE TYPE phone_list_type AS VARRAY (5) of phone_type; CREATE TYPE customer_type AS OBJECT (customer_name(VARCHAR (20), phone_numbers phone_list_type); CREATE TABLE customer of customer_type; SELECT customer_name phone_numbers FROM customer;

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Managing Large Objects

Oracle can store extremely large objects:

RBLOB (binary large object) CLOB (character large object) BFILE (binary file stored outside the database) NCLOB (fixed-width multibyte CLOB)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.5:
Implementation and Related Issues

The ORDBMS must dynamically link a user-defined function in its address space Client-server issues:

if a server needs to perform a function, it is best to do so in the DBMS (server) address space

Queries should be possible to run inside functions Efficient storage and access of data

Especially given new types, is very important

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Other Issues

Object-relational database design

Object-relational design is more complicated

Query processing and optimization Interaction of rules with transactions

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Section 22.6 Nested Relational Model

Nested relational mode: Removes the restriction of the first normal form (1NF) No commercial database supports a nested relational model Visual representation:

DEPENDENT

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Attributes of Nested Relations

Simple value attributes Multi-valued simple attributes Multi-valued composite attributes Single-valued composite attributes

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Manipulating Nested Relations

Extension made to

Relational algebra Relational calculus SQL

Two operations for converting between nested and flat relations:

NEST UNNEST

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Example of NEST

To nest un-nested attributes:

EMP_PROJ_FLAT SSN, ENAME, PNUMBER, HOURS (EMP_PRO) EMP_PROJ_NESTED NEST PROJ = (PNUMBER,HOURS) (EMP_PROJ_FLAT)

Nested relation PROJS within EMP_PROJ_NESTED groups together the tuples with the same value for the attributes that are not specified in the NEST operation

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Example of UNNEST

UNNEST operation is the inverse of NEST; thus we can recover EMP_PROJ_FLAT:

EMP_PROJ_FLAT UNNEST PROJS = (PNUMBER,HOURS) (EMP_PROJ_NESTED)

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Summary

An overview of the object-oriented features in SQL-99 Current trends in DBMS that led to the development of object-relational models Features of Informix Universal Server and Oracle Nested relational models

Copyright 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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