Re: Object/Relational Databases

From: William Boyle <woboyle_at_ieee.org>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 16:01:01 GMT
Message-ID: <3A2D113D.8C9DFC02@ieee.org>

Pier Nardin wrote:
>
> What would one call a set of functions to read, write and query class
> instances in a binary file? Is it a relational or object database?
> Each object has an an associated object number and variable size
> attributes.
>
> Pier

Neither. This capability is called serialization or object persistence. An object database will provide these capabilities, but this capability alone does not a database make. Certainly useful, but without ad-hoc query, cross-reference (join), and integrity contraints, it is just a set of low-level tools to save, restore, and query object state.

-Bill Boyle Received on Tue Dec 05 2000 - 10:01:01 CST