A distributed object-oriented database system supporting shared and private databases

• Published in: ACM transactions on information systems 1991-01, Vol.9 (1), p.31-51
• Main Authors: Kim, Won, Ballou, Nat, Garza, Jorge F., Woelk, Darrell
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architectures; Computer systems organization; Data management systems; Database management system engines; Distributed architectures; General programming languages; Information systems; Language types; Object oriented languages; Parallel and distributed DBMSs; Software and its engineering; Software notations and tools
• ISSN: 1046-8188; 1558-2868
• DOI: 10.1145/103731.103733

ORION-2 is a commercially available, federated, object-oriented database management system designed and implemented at MCC. One major architectural innovation in ORION-2 is the coexistence of a shared databese and a number of private databases. The shared database is accessible to all authorized users of the system, while each private database is accessible to only the user who owns it. A distributed database system with a shared database and private databases for individual users is a natural architecture for data-intensive application environments on a network of workstations, notably computer-aided design and engineering systems. This paper discusses the benefits and limitations of such a system and explores the impact of such an architecture on the semantics and implementation of some of the key functions of a database system, notably queries, database schema, and versions. Although the issues are discussed in the context of an object-oriented data model, the results (at least significant portions thereof) are applicable to database systems supporting other data models.