Object-Oriented Database Design Clearly Explained (Paperback)

by Jan L. Harrington (Author) "As far as a database professional is concerned, data modeling is the art of identifying the entities that must be represented in a database and..." (more)
Key Phrases: attribute string city, attribute string state, skill numb, Mighty-Mite Motors, East Coast Aquarium, Might-Mite Motors (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Object-oriented database management systems are growing in popularity, thanks to changing corporate needs and the emergence of several viable products. However, while most database professionals have had at least some exposure to the basic concepts of object-oriented programming, information relating specifically to object-oriented databases has remained hard to come by.
Object-Oriented Database Design Clearly Explained remedies this, providing developers and administrators with a ground-up understanding of the logical design of object-oriented databases. Focusing on the principles of the object paradigm while noting the particularities of specific products, this book will give readers the know-how required to produce effective designs in any environment.

Key Features
* Equips the reader with a sound understanding of the object paradigm and all key concepts, illustrating its points with three in-depth case * Presents product- and platform-neutral guidelines and advice, teaching readers the underlying object-oriented design principles they will need to apply regardless of the specific technology adopted
* Details today's OODBMS standards and the variety of approaches taken by current products
* Serves as a companion volume to Relational Database Design Clearly Explained, providing parallel examples that help to clarify relational and object-oriented data models

From the Back Cover

If you or your company is heavily invested in a relational database system, someone somewhere has probably told you that you should consider going object-oriented-whatever that means. Although object orientation is well understood and accepted in application development, its role in database systems is just beginning to emerge. The lack of an accepted standard only adds to the uncertainty.

This book will help you make sense of the conflicting theories and vendor claims about object-oriented database systems. In it, you will find:

• Background on the concepts behind the object-oriented paradigm
  
• Coverage of the two methods for introducing objects into a database environment: the pure object-oriented approach and a hybrid object-relational approach
  
• An in-depth discussion of designing databases for either object-oriented approach
  
• A summary of the proposed standard for pure-object databases
  
• Database design case studies with comparisons to relational designs to help you understand the implications of switching from a relational system to an object-oriented system
  
• Design implementation examples using Oracle and Jasmine

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (October 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0123264286
• ISBN-13: 978-0123264282
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #984,023 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A useful review quotation, October 30, 2002

By	Devin B. Hedge "devinhedge" (Sterling, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Every now and then I find a review somewhere else in cyberspace that I wish was posted on Amazon.com. Here is one from the ACCU.org website.
"Reviewed by Silvia de Beer in Overload OL37 (May 2000)
This book has not taught me anything new. I can not think who the intended audience would be. In the preface the author claims you need to be thoroughly familiar with the relational database model and that you do not need a background in the OO paradigm.

Part one, a hundred pages of theory, explains the OO data model. UML is shortly mentioned, but throughout the rest of the book ER models are used. The quality of some of the models is doubtful, as inheritance seems overvalued. Normal associations, like delegation or other forms, are not mentioned as an alternative. I do not know why this book has OO Database design in the title, because hardly any specifics about this topic can be found in the book.

The equivalent of SQL for OO databases is ODL and OQL, but it is stated 'A discussion of OQL is beyond the scope of this book'. So what is in the scope of the book?

Part two, two hundred pages, consists of three case studies. It contains many pages on useless company descriptions. The OO database design is based on the relational model, copied from the book Relational Database Design by the same author. Some tables are slightly objectified, but this is all that is done. There is no design, just repetitive code listings, of which the book contains no less than hundred pages.

I cannot recommend this book, you better read a good OO introduction and find another source for OO databases."

I couldn't have said it better. My reccomendation is some other guide. You might want to look at "Introduction to Object-Oriented Databases" by Won Kim or better yet, just go learn to do Object Oriented Analysis and Design using UML from the "UML Distilled" book, then (and only then) create am Object Persistance Model from the UML design.

Devin.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars valuable insights not easily found elsewhere, January 30, 2000

By	Bruce Neubauer (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really like the way this book steps through the progression from relational databases to hybrid databases to fully object-oriented databases. This is not a book on designing object-oriented applications (of which there are many good titles). It is about designing databases. The content is excellent, and is, indeed, "clearly explained." In my opinion, it is most appropriate for people with some experience with entity-relationship diagrams, and some programming background. The references cited are the "masters." This book does not waste the reader's time with silly humor or unnecessary material.

I hope there will be a second edition. If there is, the glossary might be somewhat expanded. I would like additional unified modeling language (UML) diagrams. I would like an explicit explanation of "impedience mismatch" between object-oriented applications and relational databases, although this may be slightly out of scope.

This is a unique and valuable book. Being a teacher, I see its value in the classroom. It is a practical book which surely is also of immediate value to progressive database administrators and programmers who are helping bring object technology into their organizations. It is an excellent textbook for courses on object-oriented database design. I plan to use it as a second textbook for a general course on databases. I think it would also be ideal as a second textbook for courses in object-oriented systems design which include database design.

Bruce Neubauer -- Pittsburg State University

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Another fast book? Object databases for OO beginners -Why?, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

If you don't already know and understand the basic object terminology explained in this book, you probably don't need to start with a book on object databases. I would also read the reviews of this author's other books. They are mostly very bad. This author seems to write more book than anyone could write and do a good job - even if they wrote fulltime - much less if they taught college as this author claims to. This book is probably not worth the money or your time.