Intermedia: A Case Study of the Differences Between Relational and Object-Oriented Database Systems

Abstract

This paper compares two approaches to meeting the data handling requirements of Intermedia, a hypermedia sysfem developed at fhe institute for Research in information and Scholarship at Brown Universify. Intermedia, though wriffen using an object-oriented programming language, relies on a traditional relafional database management system for data storage and retrieval. We examine the ramifications of replacing the relational database with an object-oriented database. We begin by describing the important characteristics each database system. We then describe Intermedia and give an overview of its architecture and its dafa handling requirements. We explain why and how we used a relational database management system and the problems that we encountered with this system. We then present the design of art objectodenfed database schema for Intermedia and compare the relational and object-oriented dafabase management system approaches. 1. lNTRODUCTlON The Institute for Research in Information and