|
|
Databases are one of the backbone components in the IT world that has enabled the growth and development of technologies used on the Internet and the World Wide Web. When you look at the information that is presented on websites, or the data stored in small spreadsheet applications or Access databases sent from one colleague to another via e-mail, you are looking at functionality from a database application that was responsible for organizing and transferring that information. A Database is a data store accessed through a query language or Application Programming Interface (API). In this paper I will discuss the main differences found between the most commonly used format of database architecture today, the Relational Database, and the newest methodology to appear on the horizon, the Object Oriented Database, that has the ability to become just as popular in the near future as the relational model has in the present. I’ll point out the characteristics that are apparent in both of these models and touch briefly some common examples on how both models can be utilized. Relational databases store data in tables and enable you to define relationships between those tables. The relationship that is defined between the tables are based on one or more field values (keys) that are common to the tables being accessed. The tables of the database consist of rows (tuples) having the same number of components in each row. The components of each row has a defined type, such as a string character, integer, date, etc., that is used to characterize the data value stored for that component. All data values in the same column of the table are of the same type, and they each share the same attribute or name for that column. Multiple dimensions are represented by multiple rows in a table or by multiple tables which are joined to construct a multidimensional object.
|
