Design and implementation of a multimedia DBMS: catalog management, table creation and data insertion

Abstract

Current Database Management Systems (DBMS) manage only alphanumeric data but not multimedia data. In order to have a DBMS that can handle both alphanumeric data and multimedia data, one can either build a new system or modify an existing system. The decision was to build such a system on top of an existing system, namely INGRES, using the abstract data type (ADT) concept. Unfortunately the INGRES system used does not support ADT. As a result the Multimedia Database Management System (MDBMS) prototype must design data structures that would allow the capture and retrieval of the information relating to the data in the database. Further, to implement the ADT concept for the multimedia data, additional tables need to be created that would hold information relating to the multimedia data. This process of dealing with the management of information, generally referred to as catalog management, in the MDBMS prototype is a major part of this thesis. The design of the data structures and their applications are explained. In addition, to be able to insert data into the database, operations for the creation of tables and the insertion of the data are needed. These operations are not simple, single SQL statement. Because of the potential presence of multimedia data, the generation of multiple statements may be required from one simple user statement. The thesis also discusses the design and implementation of these operations.