Object-Based Databases

Object-Based Databases

• Complex Data Types and Object Orientation

• Structured Data Types and Inheritance in SQL
• Table Inheritance
• Array and Multiset Types in SQL
• Object Identity and Reference Types in SQL
• Implementing O-R Features
• Persistent Programming Languages
• Comparison of Object-Oriented and Object-Relational Databases
 Object-Relational Data Models

Extend the relational data model by including object orientation and constructs to deal
with added data types.
Allow attributes of tuples to have complex types, including non-atomic values such as
nested relations.
Preserve relational foundations, in particular the declarative access to data, while
extending modeling power.
Upward compatibility with existing relational languages.
 Complex Data Types

Motivation:
Permit non-atomic domains (atomic  indivisible)
Example of non-atomic domain: set of integers,or set of tuples
Allows more intuitive modeling for applications with complex data
Intuitive definition:
allow relations whenever we allow atomic (scalar) values — relations within
relations
Retains mathematical foundation of relational model
Violates first normal form.
 Example of a Nested Relation
Example: library information system
Each book has
title,
a list (array) of authors,
Publisher, with subfields name and branch, and
a set of keywords
Non-1NF relation books
 4NF Decomposition of Nested Relation

Suppose for simplicity that title

uniquely identifies a book
In real world ISBN is a unique
identifier
Decompose books into 4NF using the
schemas:
(title, author, position )
(title, keyword )
(title, pub-name, pub-branch )
4NF design requires users to include
joins in their queries.
 Complex Types and SQL

Extensions introduced in SQL:1999 to support complex types:

Collection and large object types
 Nested relations are an example of collection types
Structured types
 Nested record structures like composite attributes
Inheritance
Object orientation
 Including object identifiers and references
Not fully implemented in any database system currently
But some features are present in each of the major commercial database
systems
 Read the manual of your database system to see what it supports
 Structured Types and Inheritance in SQL
Structured types (a.k.a. user-defined types) can be declared and used in SQL
create type Name as
(firstname varchar(20),
lastname varchar(20))
final
create type Address as
(street varchar(20),
city varchar(20),
zipcode varchar(20))
not final
Note: final and not final indicate whether subtypes can be created
Structured types can be used to create tables with composite attributes
create table person (
name Name,
address Address,
dateOfBirth date)
Dot notation used to reference components: name.firstname
 Structured Types (cont.)
User-defined row types
create type PersonType as (
name Name,
address Address,
dateOfBirth date)
not final
Can then create a table whose rows are a user-defined type
create table customer of CustomerType
Alternative using unnamed row types.
create table person_r(
name row(firstname varchar(20),
lastname varchar(20)),
address row(street varchar(20),
city varchar(20),
zipcode varchar(20)),
dateOfBirth date)
 Methods

Can add a method declaration with a structured type.

method ageOnDate (onDate date)
returns interval year
Method body is given separately.
create instance method ageOnDate (onDate date)
returns interval year
for CustomerType
begin
return onDate - self.dateOfBirth;
end
We can now find the age of each customer:
select name.lastname, ageOnDate (current_date)
from customer
 Constructor Functions

Constructor functions are used to create values of structured types

E.g.
create function Name(firstname varchar(20), lastname varchar(20))
returns Name
begin
set self.firstname = firstname;
set self.lastname = lastname;
end
To create a value of type Name, we use
new Name(‘John’, ‘Smith’)
Normally used in insert statements
insert into Person values
(new Name(‘John’, ‘Smith),
new Address(’20 Main St’, ‘New York’, ‘11001’),
date ‘1960-8-22’);
 Type Inheritance

Suppose that we have the following type definition for people:

create type Person
(name varchar(20),
address varchar(20))
Using inheritance to define the student and teacher types
create type Student
under Person
(degree varchar(20),
department varchar(20))
create type Teacher
under Person
(salary integer,
department varchar(20))
Subtypes can redefine methods by using overriding method in place of
method in the method declaration
 Multiple Type Inheritance

SQL:1999 and SQL:2003 do not support multiple inheritance

If our type system supports multiple inheritance, we can define a type for
teaching assistant as follows:
create type Teaching Assistant
under Student, Teacher
To avoid a conflict between the two occurrences of department we can
rename them
create type Teaching Assistant
under
Student with (department as student_dept ),
Teacher with (department as teacher_dept )
Each value must have a most-specific type
 Table Inheritance

Tables created from subtypes can further be specified as subtables

E.g. create table people of Person;
create table students of Student under people;
create table teachers of Teacher under people;
Tuples added to a subtable are automatically visible to queries on the supertable
E.g. query on people also sees students and teachers.
Similarly updates/deletes on people also result in updates/deletes on subtables
To override this behaviour, use “only people” in query
Conceptually, multiple inheritance is possible with tables
e.g. teaching_assistants under students and teachers
But is not supported in SQL currently
 So we cannot create a person (tuple in people) who is both a student and a teacher
 Consistency Requirements for Subtables

Consistency requirements on subtables and supertables.

Each tuple of the supertable (e.g. people) can correspond to at most one tuple in each of
the subtables (e.g. students and teachers)
Additional constraint in SQL:1999:
All tuples corresponding to each other (that is, with the same values for inherited
attributes) must be derived from one tuple (inserted into one table).
 That is, each entity must have a most specific type
 We cannot have a tuple in people corresponding to a tuple each in students and
teachers
 Array and Multiset Types in SQL

Example of array and multiset declaration:

create type Publisher as
(name varchar(20),
branch varchar(20));
create type Book as
(title varchar(20),
author_array varchar(20) array [10],
pub_date date,
publisher Publisher,
keyword-set varchar(20) multiset);
create table books of Book;
 Creation of Collection Values
Array construction
array [‘Silberschatz’,`Korth’,`Sudarshan’]

Multisets
multiset [‘computer’, ‘database’, ‘SQL’]

To create a tuple of the type defined by the books relation:

(‘Compilers’, array[`Smith’,`Jones’],
new Publisher (`McGraw-Hill’,`New York’),
multiset [`parsing’,`analysis’ ])

To insert the preceding tuple into the relation books

insert into books
values
(‘Compilers’, array[`Smith’,`Jones’],
new Publisher (`McGraw-Hill’,`New York’),
multiset [`parsing’,`analysis’ ]);
 Querying Collection-Valued Attributes
To find all books that have the word “database” as a keyword,
select title
from books
where ‘database’ in (unnest(keyword-set ))
We can access individual elements of an array by using indices
E.g.: If we know that a particular book has three authors, we could write:
select author_array[1], author_array[2], author_array[3]
from books
where title = `Database System Concepts’
To get a relation containing pairs of the form “title, author_name” for each
book and each author of the book
select B.title, A.author
from books as B, unnest (B.author_array) as A (author )
To retain ordering information we add a with ordinality clause
select B.title, A.author, A.position
from books as B, unnest (B.author_array) with ordinality as
A (author, position )
 Unnesting
The transformation of a nested relation into a form with fewer (or no) relation-
valued attributes us called unnesting.
E.g.
select title, A as author, publisher.name as pub_name,
publisher.branch as pub_branch, K.keyword
from books as B, unnest(B.author_array ) as A (author ),
unnest (B.keyword_set ) as K (keyword )
Result relation flat_books
 Nesting

Nesting is the opposite of unnesting, creating a collection-valued attribute

Nesting can be done in a manner similar to aggregation, but using the function colect() in
place of an aggregation operation, to create a multiset
To nest the flat_books relation on the attribute keyword:
select title, author, Publisher (pub_name, pub_branch ) as publisher,
collect (keyword) as keyword_set
from flat_books
groupby title, author, publisher
To nest on both authors and keywords:
select title, collect (author ) as author_set,
Publisher (pub_name, pub_branch) as publisher,
collect (keyword ) as keyword_set
from flat_books
group by title, publisher
 Nesting (Cont.)

Another approach to creating nested relations is to use subqueries in the select clause,
starting from the 4NF relation books4
select title,
array (select author
from authors as A
where A.title = B.title
order by A.position) as author_array,
Publisher (pub-name, pub-branch) as publisher,
multiset (select keyword
from keywords as K
where K.title = B.title) as keyword_set
from books4 as B
 Object-Identity and Reference Types
Define a type Department with a field name and a field head which is a reference to the
type Person, with table people as scope:
create type Department (
name varchar (20),
head ref (Person) scope people)
We can then create a table departments as follows
create table departments of Department
We can omit the declaration scope people from the type declaration and instead make an
addition to the create table statement:
create table departments of Department
(head with options scope people)
Referenced table must have an attribute that stores the identifier, called the self-referential
attribute
create table people of Person
ref is person_id system generated;
 Initializing Reference-Typed Values

To create a tuple with a reference value, we can first create the tuple with a null
reference and then set the reference separately:
insert into departments
values (`CS’, null)
update departments
set head = (select p.person_id
from people as p
where name = `John’)
where name = `CS’
 User Generated Identifiers
The type of the object-identifier must be specified as part of the type definition of the
referenced table, and
The table definition must specify that the reference is user generated
create type Person
(name varchar(20)
address varchar(20))
ref using varchar(20)
create table people of Person
ref is person_id user generated
When creating a tuple, we must provide a unique value for the identifier:
insert into people (person_id, name, address ) values
(‘01284567’, ‘John’, `23 Coyote Run’)
We can then use the identifier value when inserting a tuple into departments
Avoids need for a separate query to retrieve the identifier:
insert into departments
values(`CS’, `02184567’)
 User Generated Identifiers (Cont.)

Can use an existing primary key value as the identifier:

create type Person
(name varchar (20) primary key,
address varchar(20))
ref from (name)
create table people of Person
ref is person_id derived
When inserting a tuple for departments, we can then use
insert into departments
values(`CS’,`John’)
 Path Expressions

Find the names and addresses of the heads of all departments:

select head –>name, head –>address
from departments
An expression such as “head–>name” is called a path expression
Path expressions help avoid explicit joins
If department head were not a reference, a join of departments with people would be
required to get at the address
Makes expressing the query much easier for the user
 Implementing O-R Features

Similar to how E-R features are mapped onto relation schemas

Subtable implementation
Each table stores primary key and those attributes defined in that table
or,
Each table stores both locally defined and inherited attributes
 Persistent Programming Languages

Languages extended with constructs to handle persistent data

Programmer can manipulate persistent data directly
no need to fetch it into memory and store it back to disk (unlike embedded SQL)
Persistent objects:
Persistence by class - explicit declaration of persistence
Persistence by creation - special syntax to create persistent objects
Persistence by marking - make objects persistent after creation
Persistence by reachability - object is persistent if it is declared explicitly to be so or is
reachable from a persistent object
 Object Identity and Pointers

Degrees of permanence of object identity

Intraprocedure: only during execution of a single procedure
Intraprogram: only during execution of a single program or query
Interprogram: across program executions, but not if data-storage format on disk changes
Persistent: interprogram, plus persistent across data reorganizations
Persistent versions of C++ and Java have been implemented
C++
 ODMG C++
 ObjectStore
Java
 Java Database Objects (JDO)
 Persistent C++ Systems

Extensions of C++ language to support persistent storage of objects

Several proposals, ODMG standard proposed, but not much action of late
persistent pointers: e.g. d_Ref<T>
creation of persistent objects: e.g. new (db) T()
Class extents: access to all persistent objects of a particular class
Relationships: Represented by pointers stored in related objects
 Issue: consistency of pointers
 Solution: extension to type system to automatically maintain back-references
Iterator interface
Transactions
Updates: mark_modified() function to tell system that a persistent object that was fetched into
memory has been updated
Query language
 Persistent Java Systems
Standard for adding persistence to Java : Java Database Objects (JDO)
Persistence by reachability
Byte code enhancement
 Classes separately declared as persistent
 Byte code modifier program modifies class byte code to support persistence
– E.g. Fetch object on demand
– Mark modified objects to be written back to database
Database mapping
 Allows objects to be stored in a relational database
Class extents
Single reference type
 no difference between in-memory pointer and persistent pointer
 Implementation technique based on hollow objects (a.k.a. pointer swizzling)
 Object-Relational Mapping

Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) systems built on top of traditional relational databases

Implementor provides a mapping from objects to relations
Objects are purely transient, no permanent object identity
Objects can be retried from database
System uses mapping to fetch relevant data from relations and construct objects
Updated objects are stored back in database by generating corresponding update/insert/delete
statements
The Hibernate ORM system is widely used
described in Section 9.4.2
Provides API to start/end transactions, fetch objects, etc
Provides query language operating direcly on object model
 queries translated to SQL
Limitations: overheads, especially for bulk updates
 Comparison of O-O and O-R Databases

Relational systems
simple data types, powerful query languages, high protection.
Persistent-programming-language-based OODBs
complex data types, integration with programming language, high performance.
Object-relational systems
complex data types, powerful query languages, high protection.
Object-relational mapping systems
complex data types integrated with programming language, but built as a layer on top of a
relational database system
Note: Many real systems blur these boundaries
E.g. persistent programming language built as a wrapper on a relational database offers
first two benefits, but may have poor performance.
Figure 22.05
Figure 22.07