Object Database

System
By
Sudarshan

MCA Sem V
 OO Data Modelling: Example

• Case Study: UNN Information System (UNN-

IS)
– Northumbria University has several academic
departments.
– Each department provides one or more courses.
– Each course is composed of several modules, where a
module may be part of more than one course.
– A student enrolls on a course and every year takes a
specified number of modules. Note that several students
are usually registered for a course.
– Every student is assigned a tutor at the start of the
course, who is a lecturer in the department providing the
course.
– A lecturer works for a department and usually teaches on
several modules.
– Each module has a module tutor who is a lecturer. A
lecturer may be a tutor of several modules.
Class Diagram for UNN-IS
 Mapping Class Diagrams into ODL
• At this stage, we are dealing with classes,
attributes, and operations.
– Different associations and inheritance will be
covered next.
• Mapping (general case)
– Each UML class becomes an ODL class.
– Each attribute or method in a UML class becomes
an attribute or operation of an ODL class with
appropriate types.
– Specify a suitable extent name unless the class
diagram explicitly indicates otherwise.
– Specify a unique key if one or more attributes of a
UML class are shown in bold or tagged with {PK}.
– For a composite attribute, specify a structure
literal type.
 University schema in ODL
class Person
{ attribute string name;
attribute string address;
attribute date birthDate;
short age(); };
class Lecturer extends Person (extent Lecturers)
{ attribute short room;
relationship set<Student> tutees inverse Student::tutor;
relationship Department worksFor inverse Department::staff;
relationship set<Unit> teaches inverse Unit::taughtBy;
boolean teachUnit(in Unit U); };

class Student extends Person (extent Students)

{ attribute string major;
relationship Lecturer tutor inverse Lecturer::tutees;
relationship Course enrolledOn inverse Course::hasStudents;
relationship set<Unit> takes inverse Unit::takenBy;
boolean register(in Course C);
boolean takeUnit(in Unit U); };
University schema in ODL – cont …
class Department (extent Departments)
{ attribute string name;
relationship set<Lecturer> staff inverse Lecturer::worksFor;
relationship set<Course> offers inverse Course::offeredBy; };

class Course (extent Courses)

{ attribute string name;
relationship Department offeredBy inverse Department::offers;
relationship set<Student> hasStudents inverse Student::enrolledOn;
relationship set<Unit> hasUnits inverse Unit::partOf; };

class Unit (extent Units)

{ attribute string name;
attribute string code;
relationship set<Student> takenBy
relationship set<Lecturer> taughtBy
relationship set<Course> partOf
inverse Student::takes;
inverse Lecturer::teaches;
inverse Course::hasUnits; };
UNN-IS
COMPLETE
CLASS
DIAGRAM
 OQL – for querying the database

• OQL is the the query language in ODMG

standard.
• OQL is a superset of the SQL (in select-
from-where clauses).
• It can be interactive as well as embedded
in other programming languages.
• It is a declarative language.
• OQL can invoke operations written in
programming languages (C++, Java,
Smalltalk).
• OQL includes operators for creating
collections, arithmetic and logical
operators, aggregation, sorting and
 Retrieving Objects
select l • The query returns all Lecturer
from l in Lecturers objects who live in Newcastle.
where l.address = The type of the query result is
“Newcastle” bag<Person>.

or • Whenever the scope of an OQL

query is a collection (e.g.
select l Lecturers, a set of Lecturer
from Lecturers as l objects), we define an iterator
where l.address = variable that ranges over the
“Newcastle” collection (e.g. l in Lecturer). In the
query l denotes an object of type
or Lecturer.

select l
from Lecturers l
where l.address =
“Newcastle”
 Database Entry Points

• Named objects are entry points

to the database (same as table
or view names in RDBs).
• Class extents are usually used
to refer to in OQL queries.
• Some frequently used objects
can be assigned unique names
e.g. ComMath a named
Department object or AdvDB as
named Unit object.
 Database Entry Points

• To use named objects, you don’t

have to write a query in select-from-
where form. You can simply write:
ComMath.staff
• which returns all staff member objects in
the school of computing and
mathematics.
Students
• which returns a set of all Student objects
in the database.
 Retrieving data from multiple objects
• Without using Joins
select struct(LName:l.name,
DName:l.worksFor.name)
from l in Lecturers
– The query contains an implicit join based on the
relationship that exists between Lecturer and
Department object types and due to the path
expression l.worksFor.name. However, the user
does not need to tell the OQL compiler.
• Using Joins
select struct(LName:l.name, DName:d.name)
from l in Lecturers, d in Departments
where l.worksFor = d
– Here the user explicitly tells that a join should be
performed on the basis of matching OIDs