ABSTRACT
Object-oriented programming has been around for a number of years and is experiencing wide use. In the early 1990s, the database community believed that as programs became object-oriented, the database management system would also need to change. The database’s job is to provide persistence to the data used in the object-oriented program. Because the program is designed to manipulate an object, the database should only need to store and retrieve the object. Of course, the reality is more difficult to implement. Although there are a number of pure object-oriented database management systems, most enterprise-level programs use an object-relational approach that combines some of the capability of objectoriented programs with the proven ability of enterprise-level relational database management systems. Chapter 7 discusses the object-relational design approach.
