Oracle Object Oriented Model. Any hints?

Oracle Version: Oracle 9i
Development platform : JSP and Java

For those of you unfamiliar with mechanical engineering parlance Castings, Forgings are different ways to make a product using a metal. In castings molten metal is pured into a mold wheras in forging heated metal is shaped.  

Let me describe my requirement. I have different Supplier tables , one for Casting Suppliers , one for Plastic suppliers, one for Forging suppliers etc.
All these supplier tables have several columns in common (street,city,zip, country so so....).
Example:PLASTIC_SUPPLIER table will have ID(Primary key), Name, Address, Street blah blah....

**Each** of these supplier models have some other things in common.
For example, i have a table for the Machining facilities for Plastic suppliers, a table for Machining facilities for Casting suppliers Example:CASTING_MACHINE table will have Lathe, Grinding, Milling as individal rows. Similiarly PLASTIC_MACHINE may have a different set of rows.

Of course, for each of these i have an association table implementing the many-many relationship. i.e it will tell me which plastic supplier has which machine
Example: PLASTIC_SUPPLIERMACHINE table will have the ID from PLASTIC_SUPPLIER and the ID from PLASTIC_MACHINE

Like PLASTIC_MACHINE and PLASTIC_SUPPLIERMACHINE i have **half a dozen tables*** for plastics. Similiar for Casting, Forging etc. For example i may have PLASTIC_FACILITIES, PLASTIC_CERTIFICATIONS anologous to PLASTIC_MACHINE The database approach followed earlier was the simple Relational model. Easy to understand/Easy to use. No problems at all.

Lately, i was starting to get some bright idea about using Oracle's Object oriented features. After some poring over manuals, i made some observations on which i seek your opinion

**I am studying in a university. My project is a prototype and not to
be used commmercially. Moving to an OO model will cause some student who sees this database structure throw his head in despair. it would take any student atleast one month to completely understand the intricacies of OO databases. Syntax is convoluted and makes one wonder what the fuss about OO is about.
In Java, one can visualize immediately the tremendous benefit of OO.

**The benefits that come by using this model/moving to this model seem
to be questionable. Even simple SELECT/INSERT statements change. This will mean that all JSP pages will have to be recoded. Querying Nested tables/defining VARRAY's
is not simple to understand for a new comer or even someone relatively experinced in programming. No more select * from mytable !

**Remember reading some SQL Guru (Celko?) saying that he had to "clean
up" some OO database and convert it back to relational form since it had become unmanageable.

However, I am very open however to your valuable opinions. Can someone give your opinion why or why i should not move to the OO Model?.

Karthik Received on Wed Aug 28 2002 - 23:40:41 CDT