Once a plug-in has been set up and registered, it provides abstract data types and index types, thus enabling the user to easily build an object relational database that can handle complex data, such as multimedia information, without having to define a complex data structure or operations using abstract data types.

To define a table, an abstract data type provided by the plug-in is specified as the data type of the column in the table. To define an index, an index type provided by the plug-in is specified as the index. An index for which an index type provided by a plug-in is specified is called a plug-in index. The specifics of the plug-in index facility depend on the particular plug-in; for details, see the manual for the applicable plug-in.

For details about designing and creating an object relational database to be used with plug-ins, see the HiRDB Version 8 Installation and Design Guide.