Using the Co-existence Approach to Achieve Combined Functionality of Object-Oriented and Relational Systems

Abstract

Once considered a novelty, object oriented systems have now entered the mainstream. Their impressive performance and rich type systems have created a demand for object oriented features in other areas, such as relational database systems. We believe the current efforts to combine object oriented and relational features into a single hybrid system will fall short of the mark, whereas our approach, the co-existence approach, has the distinction of requiring far less work, but at the same time promising both the desired functionality and performance. We describe the attributes of our co-existing systems, an object oriented system 1993 and a relational system (Starburst), and show how this combination supports the desired features of both object-oriented and relational systems. © 1993, ACM. All rights reserved.