By applying object oriented concepts to a relational database model, you can build an object relational database management system.

HiRDB is capable of handling data with a complex structure, such as multimedia data, as well as operations performed on such data, by integrating this type of data as objects and managing them in a database. This means that SQL statements can be used to manipulate multimedia data, as in the case of a conventional relational database. For example, you can manage and manipulate the following types of multimedia data:

• SGML/XML structured text data
  You can perform operations such as text searches and highlighting of retrieval hit positions by means of structure specifications.
  
• Image data
  You can perform operations such as calculation of levels of similarities (the extent to which a given image is similar to another image) by means of quantifying image features.
  

The SGML/XML structured text data and image data manipulation functions are provided as plug-ins. For details on using plug-ins, see Chapter 10. Plug-ins.

Organization of this section

3.5.1 Abstract data types

3.5.2 Subtypes and inheritance

3.5.3 Encapsulation